278 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO.

4, APRIL 2008

A 21 GHz Complementary Transformer

Coupled CMOS VCO
Chao-Chieh Li, To-Po Wang, Student Member, IEEE, Che-Chung Kuo, Mei-Chen Chuang, and
Huei Wang, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractA new topology for low power voltage controlled os-

cillators (VCOs) using a 0.18- m CMOS foundry process is pre-
sented in this letter. From the measured results, the VCO exhibits
a tuning range of 3% at 21.3 GHz. Using complementary topology,
the core power consumption and the output power are 9.6 mW and
3 dBm, respectively. With the broadside coupled transformer,
the VCO achieves a good phase noise of 106 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz
offset and a compact chip size of 350 470 m2 . It is the first
time that the broadside coupled transformer approach is applied
to transformer coupled CMOS VCOs.
Index TermsBroadside coupled transformer, K-band, low
power, voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs).

I. INTRODUCTION

T HE design of high frequency voltage control oscillators

(VCOs) represents an issue of great concern. In consider-
ation of the implementation cost and system integration, VCOs
fabricated in a standard CMOS process have attracted great at-
tention in recent years. Fully integrated CMOS VCOs operating
at millimeter-wave frequencies have been demonstrated [1][5].
However, due to the lack of high- on-chip inductors, most of
the VCO circuits suffer from high power consumption, reduced
output swing and poor phase noise at high-frequencies.
Transformer-based LC VCOs were reported recently [6][8].
Since the transformer has a higher quality factor than a single
inductor of a similar size, a transformer-based LC VCO can
provide a smaller area than traditional LC resonator VCO, es-
pecially when a broadside coupled transformer is used. Due
to the effect of parasitic capacitances [9], most reported trans-
former-based CMOS LC VCOs were below X-band [8].
In this letter, a complementary VCO is proposed with broad-
side coupled transformer which can not only increase the cou-
pling coefficient and quality factor but also reduce the occu-
pied area. The size and the width of this transformer were op-
timized to reduce parasitic capacitance and increase the self-
resonant frequency. This VCO is fabricated using a 0.18- m
CMOS process. The measured result shows that the oscillation
frequency is 21.3 GHz with 3% tuning range. The core dc power
consumption is only 9.6 mW, with an output power of 3 dBm.
Manuscript received September 23, 2007; revised November 26,2007. This
work was supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan., R.O.C.,
under Projects NSC 94-2219-E-002-011, NSC 93-2213-E-002-033, and
NSC93-2752-E-002-002-PAE and by TSMC , HsinChu , Taiwan, R.O.C.,
through the Chip Implementation Center, Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Graduate
Institute of Communication Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei
106, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: hueiwang@ew. ee. ntu. edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2008.918949
1531-1309/$25.00 2008 IEEE
Fig. 1. Circuit schematic of the complementary transformer-based VCO with
a broadside-coupled differential transformer.
The phase noise at 1-MHz offset is 105.9 dBc/Hz. The chip
size is only 0.16 mm including bond pads. This is the first time
that the broadside coupled transformer is applied to transformer
coupled CMOS VCOs.
II. CIRCUIT DESIGN AND FABRICATION
The schematic of the proposed complementary LC VCO
composing a differential transformer is shown in Fig. 1. Stan-
dard 0.18- m CMOS MS/RF process with an of 50 GHz is
used to implement the VCO. To generate the suitable negative
conductance required for oscillation start up, a complementary
structure consisting of NMOS (M1-M2) and PMOS (M3-M4)
is used. Due to the lower of PMOS, the size of PMOS domi-
nates the oscillation frequency. The topology of complementary
LC VCOs can offer higher transconductance for a given current,
which can reduce the device size of the VCO as well as the
power consumption and result in superior phase noise and high
output swing, as mentioned in [10]. Small devices of 8-finger
NMOS and 12-finger PMOS are used. To make a cross couple
pair, was connected to the drain, and the was connected
to the other gate. Both of the self inductors were optimized to
the minimum value that satisfied the startup constraints for the
maximum bias current allowed [11], and also lead to a smallest
chip size.
Since drain and gate bias are connected together in a conven-
tional complementary VCO, a current source to limit the output
voltage level is utilized. In this proposed topology, drain and
gate dc-biases are separately controlled. Therefore, the gate bias
can be used to limit the output dc level to half of , which
results in the highest output signal power for a given bias. The
LI et al.: 21 GHZ COMPLEMENTARY TRANSFORMER COUPLED CMOS VCO 279

Fig. 2. Broadside coupled transformer, metal 5 and metal 4 was via together to
reduced the metal loss.

Fig. 4. Chip photograph of the VCO.

Fig. 3. Simulated quality factors and coupling coefficients of broadside coupler

and edge coupler, respectively.

current source can be removed, and thus both phase noise and
power consumption can be improved. Inversion mode 12-finger
NMOS varactors were used for frequency tuning. Due to the
small size varactors, the inductance quality factor dominates the
tank quality factor.
It is well known that a transformer based LC tank has a high
quality factor which can be described by
where is the coupling coefficient of a transformer and is
the quality factor of a single LC-resonator which is composed
of and or and [12].
To achieve a higher coupling coefficient and provide smaller
size than edge coupled transformer, broadside coupled trans-
former shown in Fig. 2 is used in this circuit. The top thick metal,
metal 6, is used in the inductance ( ) of the primary coil. In the
secondary coil, metal 5 and metal 4 are combined to reduce the
loss of the same as . The metal width is a trade off between
the metal loss and the effect of parasitic capacitances. The sim-
ulated is 0.34 nH and the is 0.38 nH.
Fig. 3 shows the quality factors and coupling coefficients of
broadside coupler and edge coupler, respectively. Both of them
have a turn number of 2, the width of 9 m and the minimum
spacing of 1.5 m. As shown in Fig. 3, a higher coupling coeffi-
cient results in a higher quality factor. The coupling coefficient
is dependent on the mutual inductance as well as the length of
the couple line. At high frequency, the inductor of a LC-tank
VCO is usually small. Thus, a small inductor brings up a lower
mutual inductance and coupling coefficient. The coupling co-
efficient of a conventional edge coupled transformer is about
0.6 in this band. In this broadside coupled transformer, a higher
,
Fig. 5. Frequency and output power with respect to the control voltage.
coupling coefficient of 0.9 can be achieved, and thus results in a
higher quality factor of ( ). The quality factor in this broad-
side transformer is 12 when the differential signal is applied.
The size of the transformer is 92 75 m.
To prevent the noise or interference from and extra bias
of , an on-chip bypass capacitor is added at each bias node.
The layout was made as symmetrical and compact as possible
to ensure differential operation and reduce parasitic effect, as
shown in Fig. 4. The chip size is 300 470 m .
III. EXPERIMENT RESULTS
The VCOs was measured via on-wafer probing. The output
spectrum and the phase noise were measured using HPE4448A
spectrum analyzer. Fig. 5 shows the tuning range and output
power of the VCOs as a function of control voltage. The tuning
is 200 MHz from 21.05 to 21.65 GHz with the control voltage
from 1.5 to 1 V. Fig. 6 plots the measured phase noise of
the VCO at 21.3 GHz with respect to frequency offset. The
280
TABLE I
PUBLISHED K-BAND VCO AND THIS WORK
Fig. 6. Measured phase noise of our VCO at 21.3 GHz with respect to fre-
quency offset.
phase noise at 1-MHz is 105.92 dBc/Hz at 21.3 GHz. We also
have measured the phase noise as a function of control voltage.
The phase noise variation is within 1 dB. The output power is
3 dBm. The is 2.4 V and the bias current is 4 mA, and
the buffer consumes 8-mW dc power. Table I summarizes the
recently published K-band VCOs. The core power in the VCO
is 9.6 mW in our design, which is much less than those of re-
ported K-band VCOs. Our VCO also has a figure of merit [13]
of 182.8 dBc/Hz and achieves the lowest power consumption
with the smallest chip size.
IV. CONCLUSION
By employing a broadside coupled transformer in the com-
plementary structure, a new VCO topology is presented to re-
duce the power consumption and the chip size with a good phase
noise at 21 GHz. The higher quality factor of the broadside cou-
pled transformer is obtained by the higher coupling coefficient.
Due to the complementary topology, power consumption can
IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO. 4, APRIL 2008
be reduced and higher dc to RF conversion efficiency can be
achieved. It is the first time that the broadside coupled trans-
former approach is applied to the transformer coupled CMOS
VCOs.
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