A 5.8-GHz high efficient, low power, low phase noise CMOS VCO for IEEE 802.11a

Abstract

A high efficient, low power and low phase noise 5.8 GHz LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) for IEEE 802.11a WLAN applications is designed and fabricated in TSMC 0.25 /spl mu/m 1P5M CMOS process. With single 2.5 V supply, it has a tuning range of 240 MHz and a phase noise of -115 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from center frequency throughout the tuning range. The total power consumption is 6.23 mW while the VCO core consumes only 2.62 mW. Compared with the recent proposed works by using the power-frequency-normalized (PFN) figure of merit, it shows a superior phase noise performance while with very low power consumption.