Analysis and Design of Low-Phase-Noise Integrated Voltage-Controlled Oscillators for Wide-Band RF Front-Ends

Status:

finished

Start date:

2001-12-01

End date:

2005-02-01

The explosive development of wireless services is attracting much attention among researchers. An obvious trend is to provide for several wireless technologies using a single battery powered portable device, e.g. a cellphone with GSM and Bluetooth transceivers. The traditional approach is to employ multi-chip or package solutions, where each radio standard is implemented as a stand-alone chip. The obvious drawbacks with these solutions are the increased power dissipation and requirements of a large chip area. Nevertheless, the cost per multi-standard device is in principal linear with the number of communication standards it follows since each radio has its own requirements and operation frequencies and is implemented as an independent single chip. A multi-standard transceiver could therefore dramatically reduce the cost and increase the functionality for radio frequency (RF) communication devices. Therefore, during last few years massive attention is dedicated to implementation aspects for multi-standard radios, aiming at reduction the complexity of such systems and improving the performance. Considering the analog RF integrated circuits in a transceiver, the Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) is a vital sub-circuit that is often limiting the entire performance of the entire system. The VCO is generally very power consuming and occupies a large chip area. Earlier research on VCOs focuses on narrowband systems that support only one radio standard. For a flexible system, supporting multiple standards, a single VCO that is tunable within a wide frequency range is preferred, instead of parallel design (having several VCOs covering for each band of interest). This project deals with the main design issues of wide-band oscillators, aspects such as the tuning range, power dissipation and most significantly phase noise performance are studied. Relevant technologies for the industry are used for verification of the concepts and ideas.

Denny Åberg, Senior Lecturer

Email: denny.aberg@mdh.se
Room: U3-038
Phone: +46-21-107040