Multi-Frequency Generation in CMOS for mm-Wave System Applications

Alvin Hsing-Tin Yu
Advisors: M.C. Frank Chang & Tatsuo Itoh

Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 3:30pm
Engr. IV Maxwell Room 57-124

Abstract:
Driven by software-defined multi-standard radios, for frequency below Ku band, many VCO multiband techniques have been presented. However, such techniques have not been applied to mm-wave frequencies. Recently FCC released several mm-wave licensed and unlicensed bands to fulfill increasing demand for multi-Gb/sec data transmission. Therefore, it is expected that a need for a frequency source that can cover all or a substantial part of these bands will emerge in the future. Among various multiband techniques, the switched-capacitor and switched-inductor methods are the most common. However when using these methods at mm-wave frequencies, a large tuning range corresponds to excessive switch loss, and a resultant degradation in the Q of the LC tank.

This work presents two techniques, left-handed (LH) and even-odd mode techniques, which are suited to mm-wave multiband applications. Both techniques employ out-of-signal-path band selection switches, which can, therefore, break the fundamental tradeoff between frequency switching range and tank quality factor. As a result, both techniques achieve multi-band operation with FOMs comparable to single band oscillators. A LH dual-band millimeter-wave oscillator is implemented in digital 90-nm CMOS technology to demonstrate the LH technique. The proposed oscillator operates at 21.3 and 55.3 GHz, respectively, with a total power consumption of 14 mW. An even-odd mode quadruple band oscillator with 4 arbitrarily chosen frequencies (43, 49, 58 and 75 GHz) is implemented in 65-nm CMOS technology. The phase noise measurements taken at 1 MHz offset are -100.3, -95.3, -93.8 and -86.2 dBc/Hz, respectively, with a total power consumption of 12 mW.

Biography:
Alvin Hsing-Ting Yu (S'07) received a B.S. degree and a M.S. degree in physics from National Taiwan University (NTU), Taiwan, in 1998 and 2002, and a M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Florida, Gainesville, in 2005. In Fall 2005, he joined Electrical Engineering Department of the University of California, Los Angeles, and is working toward the Ph.D. degree. He works in Broadcom as an internship RF circuit design Engineer from April to September 2008 and from September 2009 to present. In 1994, he represented Taiwan in 25th international physics Olympia (IPHO). His research interests include the architecture of high speed transceivers and RFICs for wireless communications.