A 5 GHz CMOS frequency synthesizer with novel phase-switching prescaler and high-Q LC-VCO

A phase-locked loop（PLL） frequency synthesizer with a novel phase-switching prescaler and a high-Q LC voltage controlled oscillator（VCO） is presented.The phase-switching prescaler with a novel modulus control mechanism is much more robust on process variations.The Q factor of the inductor,I-MOS capacitors and varactors in the VCO are optimized.The proposed frequency synthesizer was fabricated by SMIC 0.13μm 1P8M MMRF CMOS technology with a chip area of 1150×2500μm^2.When locking at 5 GHz,the current consumption is 15 mA from a supply voltage of 1.2 V and the measured phase noise at a 1 MHz offset is -122.45 dBc/Hz.

A 220–1100 MHz low phase-noise frequency synthesizer with wide-band VCO and selectable I/Q divider

This paper presents a low phase-noise fractional-N frequency synthesizer which provides an inphase/quadrature-phase（I/Q） signal over a frequency range of 220–1100 MHz for wireless networks of industrial automation（WIA） applications. Two techniques are proposed to achieve the wide range. First, a 1.4–2.2 GHz ultralow gain voltage-controlled oscillator（VCO） is adopted by using 128 tuning curves. Second, a selectable I/Q divider is employed to divide the VCO frequency by 2 or 3 or 4 or 6. Besides, a phase-switching prescaler is proposed to lower PLL phase noise, a self-calibrated charge pump is used to suppress spur, and a detect-boosting phase frequency detector is adopted to shorten settling time. With a 200 k Hz loop bandwidth, lowest measured phase noise is 106 dBc/Hz at a 10 k Hz offset and 131 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset. Fabricated in the TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS process, the synthesizer occupies a chip area of 1.2 mm^2, consumes only 15 m W from the 1.8 V power supply,and settles within 13.2 s. The synthesizer is optimized for the WIA applications, but can also be used for other short-range wireless communications, such as 433, 868, 916 MHz ISM band applications.