ISSCC96 I SESSION 24 I ANALOG TECHNIQUES I PAPER SP 24.

SP 24.6: A 900MHz CMOS LC-Oscillator with accuracy of LO quadrature is measured by the relative rejection
of the unwanted sideband, assuming that the low-frequency
Quadrature Outputs baseband signal is in exact quadrature. The four output terminals
of the polyphase oscillator are directly connected t o the gates of
Ahmadreza Rofougaran, Jacob Rael, Maryam Rofougaran, Asad Abidi the FET mixer, without an RF buffer. The oscillator absorbs the
complex impedance at 9OOMHz seen at the gates of the mixer
Electrical Engineering Department, University of Calaornia, Los Angeles, CA FETs.
The local oscillator (LO)in a wireless transceiver satisfies many The voltage a t the top-rail, Figure IC,tunes the oscillator by
exacting requirements. A variable frequency enables a phase- changing the drain bias, and thus the junction capacitance.
locked loop (PLL) to servo the LO to a stable lower frequency Oscillators A and B share a common top-rail connected to the
reference, or to correct frequency errors from measurements on power supply through a single PFET in triode-region. The four
the received signal. A low phase noise ensures little interference current phasors sum t o dc in this FET, whose channel resistance
with nearby channels.A large LO voltage-swing means that it can then sets the top-rail voltage.
drive a mixer with greater linearity. Finally, in single-sideband
applications,the LO must supplyprecise quadrature phases. Low The oscillator is functional at top-rail voltages as low as 1V
phase noise mandates use of a high-Q resonator to tune the LO, because common-source FETs, and not a differential pair, imple-
although most RF resonators are usually not integrable on ICs. ment the negative resistance. Although the oscillation amplitude
Quadrature outputs are usually derived from RC phase-shift of a increases with top-rail voltage, so does the negative conductance
single-phase LO output, but this is susceptible to component contributedby the FETs which lowers the loaded-Q of the resona-
inaccuracy and loss in LO amplitude [1,21. tor. As the phase noise depends oppositely on loaded-Q and
oscillation amplitude, the two effects almost cancel one another.
This QOOMHzoscillator circuit implemented in 1pm CMOS that
affords modestly low-phase noise, has variable frequency has The oscillator occupies an active area of 5mm2,dominated by the
large output swing, and provides quadrature-phase outputs con- four large on-chip spiral inductors. Frequency depends fairly
sists of two identical coupled oscillators, connected in such a way linearly on PFET V, over a range of 120MHz centered at
that they exert a mutual squelch when their relative phase is not 850MHz, as plotted in Figure 4.With this sensitivity, a PLL can
in quadrature. The coupled oscillators synchronizeto exactly the compensate for f15% variation in the junction capacitance, a
same frequency,in spite of mismatches in their resonant circuits. representative spread over process variations. Too high a sensi-
An early experimenter in oscillator synchronization has noted tivity penalizes phase noise. At 1.5V nominal PFET Vcs, the
that this topology fortuitously produces a two-phase output [31. quadrature oscillator draws lOmA from a 3V supply. The current
drain of a properly-scaledversion is expected to be at least three
The basic circuit building block, shown in Figure la, is the times less.
MOSFET LC oscillator consisting of a cross-coupled pair of FETs
(M1, M2) with an inductor load. The inductor resonates with the The oscillation waveform is measured at the output of the four-
FET gate and drain junction capacitance to determine the oscil- FET mixers with a balanced dc input applied. Owing to the
lation frequency. The negative resistance of -Ugmthat the FET inductor loads, the internal oscillation may grow as large as 7V
pair presents across the two drain terminals overcomes inductor differential peak-topeak, limited by FET clipping. The inherent
loss. Onset of saturation in the large-signal I-V characteristic of phase noise, plotted in Figure 5 , is measured without embedding
the FET pair limits the oscillation amplitude. Two such identical the oscillator in a PLL. The noise spectral density is -85dBcMz at
oscillators, 1abeledAandBinFigure lb, arecoupledbyFETs(M3, a frequency offset of 1OOkHz from the oscillation, and remains
M4) of the same size as the main FETs (Ml, M2), such that there relatively constant over the tuning range.
is direct-couplingin one direction,and cross-coupling in the other.
When this LO-mixer combinationupconverts a lOMHz baseband
Supposenow that the two oscillations synchronizein-phase.Then quadrature input, the unwanted sideband lies 46.5dB lower than
the cross-coupled path from oscillator B to A absorbs the negative- the wanted sideband, as shown in Figure 6. The gain in the two
resistance current produced by MlA, M2A, and oscillator A channels of switch-based mixers is expected to be exactly the
ceases. The inductors in oscillator A pull up both drain nodes to same, implying that the LO outputs are less than 1"from perfect
V,,, and through the cross-coupled FETs this shutsoff oscillator quadrature.
E. The same process applies in reverse if the two oscillations are
anti-phase. Therefore, the oscillations only co-exist when they Acknowledgment:
synchronize in quadrature. They then acquire the unique combi-
nation of 0"at M2A, 180" at MlA, 90" at M2B, and 270" at MIB. This research was sponsored by ARPA and a consortium of
semiconductor companies under the State of California MICRO
Almost all integrated 1GHz LC oscillators reported to date use Program. M. Christianson's support in test is acknowledged.
discrete inductors, including the case when the inductors are
bondwires. In this work, large spiral inductors are fabricated on References:
the same CMOS silicon substrate as the oscillator [41. A gaseous
etchant selectively removes the substrate under the spiral in a [l] Sevenhans, J. et al., :An Integrated Si Bipolar RF Transceiver for 5
Zero IF 900 MHz dSM Di tal Rad10 Frontend of a Hand Portable Phone,
maskless post-processingstep, eliminating much of the parasitic Custom IC cod., pp. 7.7E4,1991.
capacitance,and extendingthe inductor self-resonanceto several
GHz. The suspended inductor after etching is shown in Figure 2. [21 &oh J. M. Steyaert "A Full Integrated 9OOMHz CMOS Double
Quadrat& downconvert&,'' ISSCZDigest of Technical Papers, pp. 136-
The resistance of the aluminum windings limits the Q of a large- 137, Feb., 1995.
value inductor to about 5 at IGHz. [31 MiUar, D. P. M., "ATwo-PhaseAudio-Frequency Oscillator," J. of IEE,
Vol. 74, pp. 365-371, 1934.
Two channels of four-FET switch mixers, shown in Figure 3, are [41 Chang J. Y.-C. A. A. Midi M. Gaitan "Large Suspended Inductors
alsointegratedonthechip to select onesidebandinanupconverted on Silicon r$d their' use in a 2 b CMOS dF Amplifier: IEEE Electron
quadrature baseband signal and reject the other sideband. The Device Letters, Vol. 14,No. 5, pp. 246-248, 1993.

, 392 9 1996 IEEE International Solid-state Circuits Conference 0-7803-3136-2I 96 I $5.00 IO IEEE
- ISSCC96 I February 10,1996 I Sunset A D I 3 : 4 PM -

Figure 1: (a) MOS LC oscillator. (b)Identical Figure 2 Spiral inductor suspended in oxide film
oscillators coupled for quadrature outputs. above a cavity on a silicon substrate.
(c) Top-rail control of oscillation frequency.

40
920
35
2 900
5 880
30
25 Q=:
2!
U.
860
20 =
m

.- 840 15 z.
0

--% 820 10 ba
't 800 5 >
780
I ! - * I I I I I I I , I , 110
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0
PFET VGs,V
1189 Figure 4: Measured oscillation frequency and
Four-FET single-sidebandupconversion supply current on PFET gate-bias.
mixer integrated with oscillator for test.

I I l l 7 I
____..
I I I I I I
300 Hz FrequencyOffset 1 MHz -10MHz +loMHz
F'igure 5: Measured single-sideband phase noise Figure 6 Measured output spectrum after
spectral density. upconversion of loMHz tone.

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