A 20-GHz VCO for PLL synthesizer in 0.13-μm BiCMOS

A 20-GHz voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) for phase-locked loop (PLL) synthesizer is presented in this paper. The VCO and PLL synthesizer have been implemented using only CMOS devices of a 0.13-μm SiGe BiCMOS technology with the chip area of 0.22 mm2 and 0.48 mm2, respectively. The measured tuning range of the VCO is 2.21 GHz from 19.9 to 22.11 GHz; the PLL synthesizer can generate output frequencies from 20.51 to 21.27 GHz successfully and the measured phase noise at 100-kHz and 1-MHz offset frequencies is -68.66 dBc/Hz and -97.17 dBc/Hz, respectively. At a 1.5-V supply, the power dissipation of the VCO and PLL synthesizer is 27 mW and 40 mW, respectively.