A 0.06mm<sup>2</sup> 14.7-to-20.2GHz Quad-Core VCO Enabled by the Folded Circular Transformer Achieving 201.1dBc/Hz FoM<sub>T</sub> and 203.4dBc/Hz FoM<sub>A</sub>
This paper proposes a quad-core oscillator utilizing a folded circular transformer that utilizes both magnetic and electric coupling for core synchronization, greatly reducing the area and phase noise penalty of quad-core VCOs. Moreover, the proposed transformer simultaneously enhances common-mode and differential-mode quality factors. Fabricated in 28nm CMOS, the proposed VCO covers 14.7-to-20.2GHz (31.5%) within an area of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$0.06 \text{mm}^{2}$</tex> while consuming 5.3mW power. It achieves FoM<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">A</inf> and FoM<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</inf>@10MHz offset frequency of 203.4 and 201.1dBc/Hz at 15.8GHz.
Authors
- Hao Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1190-2897)
- Wenpeng He
- Tiantong Ou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2947-0749)
- Man‐Kay Law (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2799-1129)
- Na Yan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1616-0450)
- Kunpeng Hu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-2668-3370)
- Zhiwei Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4278-8487)
- Junjie Gu
- Junyan Bi
- Yizhuo Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7587-1322)
Institutions
- University of Macau (MO)
- Fudan University (CN)
- Zhejiang University (CN)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-06-08
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.23919/vlsitechnologyandcir65189.2025.11074803
- Primary Topic
- Photonic and Optical Devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00