A 20 GHz Push-Push Voltage-Controlled Oscillator Using Second-Harmonic Peaking Technique for a 60 GHz Frequency Synthesizer

This paper presents a 20 GHz push-push VCO realized by a 10 GHz super-harmonic coupled quadrature oscillator for a quadrature 60 GHz frequency synthesizer. The output nodes are peaked by a tunable second harmonic resonator. The proposed VCO is implemented in 65 nm CMOS process. It achieves a tuning range of 3.5 GHz from 16.1 GHz to 19.6 GHz with a phase noise of −106 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The power consumption of the core oscillators is 10.3 mW and an FoM of −181.3 dBc/Hz is achieved. key words: low phase noise, low power, tail-current modulation, impulse sensitivity function, super-harmonic coupled QVCO, push-push VCO