A Low Phase Noise and High FoM Distributed-Swing-Boosting Multi-Core Oscillator Using Harmonic-Impedance-Expanding Technique

Abstract

In this article, a distributed-swing-boosting and harmonic-impedance-expanding multi-core oscillator is proposed to achieve low phase noise and high figure-of-merit (FoM), simultaneously. First, a distributed-coupling multi-core topology is introduced to reduce the chip area with no mode ambiguity. Then, the distributed-swing-boosting and harmonic-impedance-expanding structure is developed to boost the gate swing and square-like waveform of $V_{\text {DS}}$. The common-mode (CM) resonances around the second harmonic and the differential-mode (DM) resonances around the third harmonic are utilized to suppress the flicker noise up-conversion and achieve harmonic shaping. Meanwhile, the dual-resonance response expands the high-impedance frequency ranges around the harmonics, and thus, the effect of harmonic shaping can be obtained over a wide frequency range. Fabricated in a 40-nm CMOS process, the oscillator measured exhibits low phase noise and high FoM simultaneously with a compact chip size. The minimum phase noise is -138.9 dBc/Hz at the 1-MHz offset, corresponding to an FoM of 195.1 dBc/Hz. The 1/ $f^{3}$ phase noise corner is 100-130 kHz over the 26.6% tuning range.