10 GHz LC voltage-controlled oscillator in 0.25 μm CMOS

A monolithic 10 GHz LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is implemented in standard 0.25 μm CMOS technology. The VCO adopts an optimized symmetric circular inductor with center-tap, an accumulation-mode MOS (A-MOS) varactor in series with a passive metal-isolator-metal capacitor (MIM-CAP) and a tail current source with an LC filter to operate with high-frequency and low-noise resulting in -103.2 dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from carrier frequency of 10.2 GHz and approximately 11.5% tuning range. With a 3.3 V supply voltage, the core circuit consumes 9.9 mW. The chip area is 0.67 mm × 0.58 mm.