Design and Performance Analysis of Active Inductor Based VCO for IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Applications.

This paper postulates a tunable active inductor-based voltage controlled oscillator for IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac applications in 90 nm CMOS process. In the designed VCO, the modified topology of the active inductor which uses regulated cascode is implemented along with tuning competency. The layout-based simulation has been performed considering parasitic resistances and capacitances. The designed VCO yields an oscillation frequency ranging from 1.93 GHz to 5.97 GHz having tuning scope of 102%, where the tuning voltages is varied from 0 V to 0.8 V. The power consumption varies from 0.97 mW to 3.32 mW, and the VCO provides a differential output power of 3.29 dBm to −4.76 dBm. The phase noise varies from −78.52 dBc/Hz to −70.45 dBc/Hz, and the figure of merit (FOM) has a value of −143.63 dBc/Hz @ 5.09 GHz frequency. The designed VCO has been passed through process corner analysis, Monte Carlo analysis, stability analysis and temperature swept analysis to evaluate its compatibility. Furthermore, the elimination of MOS varactor has reduced overall silicon area consumption (39.73 × 25.3 \mum). Finally, the designed VCO's performance parameters have been compared with referred designs where it is illustrated that the designed VCO outperforms the others in most cases along with a good scope for implementing both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency that is, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]