RF-CMOS Oscillators with Switched Tuning

A. Kral, F. Behbahani, and A. A. Abidi

Electrical Engineering Department
University of California
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1594

Fully integrated CMOS oscillators are of great regions of the MOS capacitor's small-signal C-V
interest for use in single-chip wireless transceivers. characteristic, from inversion, through depletion,
In most oscillator circuits reported to date that into accumulation (Figure 1).The average capaci-
operate in the 0.9 to 2 GHz frequency range, an tance it experiences varies with the bias Vcs-Vt. The
integrated spiral inductor sets the frequency. It is frequency of oscillation depends on the average
generally believed that an LC oscillator, even when it capacitance, while the effect of the varying incremen-
uses a low-Q inductor, displays a lower phase noise tal capacitance across a cycle is to distort the oscillat-
than a ring oscillator. However, due to the absence of ing waveform into a non-sinusoid. This distortion is
a good varactor compatible with CMOS technology, usually small, and in any case unimportant in this
the integrated LC oscillator suffers from a very application.
limited tuning range. Although this tuning range MOS capacitor tuning is used here, as opposed
may encompass the limited frequency agility re- to junction capacitor tuning we have described in
quired in an RF oscillator, for instance to span the previous work [l].The control voltage on the MOS
modulation bandwidth in a transmitter, it will seldom capacitor may be swept across the full power supply
cover the much larger lot-to-lot process variations with no fear of forward bias. Also, in a junction
manifest as spre,nds of up to 20% in capacitance. capacitor the spreading resistance in the substrate or
Fortunately, the self-inductance of a metal spiral well is set by junction size and doping, whereas in a
does not suffer spreads, because it depends on a MOS capacitor it depends on the region of operation
precise number of turns and on the geometry of at any instant of time. In accumulation, it is a
metal traces which is little affected by fluctuations in spreading resistance in the substrate to ground; in
lithography. depletion, it is this spreading resistance in series
This work itddresses the practical problem of with a small capacitor; and in inversion, it is the
how to design RF CMOS oscillators with a wide resistance of the MOSFET channel, which is much
enough tuning range to reliably cover process lower than the spreading resistance, even at a modest
variations, without compromising current drain or VGS-Vt.
phase noise. Prototypes were developed in the 0.6-pm The oscillator current drain is lowered by using
MOSIS CMOS process to oscillate at up to 1.8 GHz as large a load impedance as is possible at the
with a sub-3V supply. The tuning method exploits oscillation frequency. Assuming the inductor domi-
digital capabilities and MOS analog switches. nates the quality factor, Q, of this LC tuned circuit
load, this is tantamount to tuning the oscillator with
On-Chip Components forTuning the largest possible inductor. However, as the induc-
Capacitors tance of a metal spiral is made larger, its self-
A CMOS oscillai or may be continuously tuned with capacitance increases as well, eventually causing the
two possible voltage-dependent capacitors: the inductor to self-resonate below the target oscillation
voltage-dependent junction capacitor at the source or frequency, here 1.8GHz. Therefore, spiral structures
drain diffusion; 'or the voltage-dependent MOS with the lowest self-capacitance per unit inductance
capacitor (a MOSFET with source and drain were investigated.
shorted). Now in a MOS oscillator the capacitor in MuIti-layer Inductors
the resonant circuit is subject to large signal swings,
The three levels of metal available in this process
on the order of i he supply voltage. Thus, depending
make it possible to fabricate a useful multi-layer
on its amplitude, the oscillation probes different
spiral inductor [2,3], whose inductance per unit
area, owing to solenoid-like properties, rises almost
Research supported by DARPA, Rockwell International, quadratically with the number of layers. Although
Harris Semiconductor, Motorola, Ericsson, Toshiba, and there is substantial capacitance between the turns in
the State of California MICRO Program.

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 the closest layers of such a spiral (Figure 3), the encompass statistical fluctuations across an array of
capacitance to substrate experiences the largest tuning elements fabricated on-chip (which are much
signal voltage. Without resorting to selective removal lower than process spreads).
of the substrate underlying the inductor [4], three- Switched Tuning Capac it o rs
layer inductors of about 10 nH may be realized for An LC oscillator may be tuned by connecting some
use at 2 GHz. combination of MOS capacitors selected from a
This inductor suffers mainly from the loss due weighted array across a fixed inductor. Each capaci-
to the resistance of the metal windings, but also due tor may be tuned continuously with an analog
to substrate losses caused by displacement currents voltage, and together the array defines the desired
flowing in the substrate spreading resistance, and piecewise V-f characteristic (Figure 3). The challenge
due to eddy currents induced in the heavily doped here is to build a satisfactory RF switch which will
substrate under the 6-pm thick epi layer. A laminated select the capacitors. The switch resistance must be
grounded polysilicon shield plate is placed under all sufficiently low to not degrade the capacitor Q. This
the inductors to prevent the displacement currents implies a FET with a large W/L ratio whose large
from flowing into the substrate 151. A simple four- junction capacitance will now parasitically load the
element model (Figure 2) is found to accurately fit capacitor array when the FET is turned OFF, and
the complex impedance of standalone test inductors compress the available spread in capacitance.
measured with a Picoprobe@across 0.8 to 5 GHz. In this prototype, the RF switch consists of an
The quality factor, Q, of any inductor at a certain array of doughnut-shaped sub-FETs (Figure 4),
frequency may be deduced from the model. For whose gate encloses the drain junction. The drain
instance, at 1.5 GHz the Q of the 13.1 nH inductor is junction capacitance is 20% lower than in a conven-
2.9. tional interdigitated FET, but the source capacitance
Random voltage fluctuations on the control is larger. However, this is unimportant in the in-
terminal of a VCO modulate its frequency and tended use because the source is grounded (Figure
induce phase noise [6].The larger the VCO modula- 4).The switch is used to connect a fixed linear
tion index Kv (Hz/V), the higher the induced phase capacitor (poly on thin oxide over N+ diffusion) in
noise. This gives rise to a dichotomy, because as parallel with a tunable MOS capacitor. The measured
mentioned in the Introduction a large Kvis benefi- tuning range is 1.34 GHz f 6 % (Figure 5), which
cial to encompass process spreads; however, it will verifies that the ("itched) MOSFET drain
also raise the phase noise. This leads to the concept capacitance is not so large that it swamps out the
of switch-selected tuning elements in a VCO. discrete capacitor being connected. The measured
Switch-SelectedTuning & Results phase noise remains almost the same when the RF
switch is ON or OFF, which shows that its resistance
Principle does not degrade resonator Q. In the transition
The frequency of the RF VCO in a wireless trans-
region when the switch is partly ON, it severely lowers
ceiver is either set by a synthesizer PLL to some the capacitor Q and the phase noise is 12 dB worse.
fixed value (as in the receiver, and often in the Of course, the switch will never be used in this way.
transmitter), or it is directly modulated by the The current drain rises slightly at the lower fre-
baseband data across a small fractional range (some-
quency.
times in a transmitter). Thus, one way to resolve the Both the ON resistance of the MOSFET switch
conflicting requirements described above is to switch and its drain junction capacitance will change with
in tuning elements from an array such that a stag- the drain voltage. Over the rail-to-rail oscillation
gered but overlapping series of VCO characteristics amplitude, the average resistance is 80R and the
is obtained, each with low Kv but together covering average drain capacitance is 40 fF.
the desired range (Figure 3). A mixed analog-digital This prototype shows the feasibility of tuning
PLL must tune this VCO, first by digitally selecting an RF oscillator with an array of switched capacitors.
the appropriate tuning element, and then fine-tuning
the frequency with the analog output of a phase-
Switched Tuning Inductors
frequency detector. , While a series MOSFET is able to select a capacitor
The overlap regions are sufficiently wide to without degrading resonator Q, when used in series
with an inductor it adds a much larger relative loss.
accommodate the modulation bandwidth, if this
However, one of an array of independent oscillators
VCO is to be used in a transmitter. Thus during
continuous modulation the tuning element will never may be selected with a MOSFET switch connected to
a common-mode point outside the oscillator loop
have to be switched. Also, the overlap region must

nn
mj.l.2
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 (Figure 6). The inductors tuning each oscillator are phase noise. From fundamental considerations, for a
sized differently. The outputs combine in buffer resonator with a given Q, phase noise is inversely
FETs with a common drain, one of which is turned proportional to: offset frequency (AA;fosc; and the
ON by the selected oscillator. These FETs are of small current drain, I. Table 1compares the results
size so as not to excessively load the resonant circuit obtained from the prototypes described here with the
in the oscillator core. A larger buffer follows to best published results for RF-CMOS integrated
provide adequate drive to the subsequent circuits. oscillators [7,8], after normalization to a 100 kHz
Each oscillator is continuously tuned by a MOS offset from 1.8 GHz, per mA current drain.
varactor.
The measured frequency tuning characteristics A. Rofougaran, J. Rael, M. Rofougaran, and A. A.
(Figure 7) show:; a frequency range from 1.4 to 1.85 Abidi, “A 900 MHz CMOS LC Oscillator with
GHz with the required overlaps between the switched Quadrature Outputs,” in Int’l Solid State Circuits
Conj, San Francisco, CA, pp. 316-317, 1996.
segments. The measured phase noise at 100 kHz
M. W. Geen, G. J. Green, R. G. Arnold, J. A. Jenkins,
offset is constant within 3 dB across the entire range, and R. H. Jansen, “Miniature Multilayer Spiral
while the current drain of the oscillator core rises Inductors for GaAs MMICs,” in GaAs IC Symp., San
from 7.2 to 8.5 rnA at the high frequencies. A Diego, CA, pp. 303-305, 1989.
representative phase noise plot (Figure 8) shows a R. B. Merrill, T. W. Lee, H. You, R. Rasmussen, and
slope of about 30 dB/decade up to an offset of 80 L. A. Moberly, “Optimization of High Q Integrated
kHz, ascribed to upconverted flicker noise in the Inductors for Multi-Level Metal CMOS,” in Int’l
MOSFETs. At higher offsets, the slope changes to 20 Electron Devices Mtg, Washington, DC, pp. 983-986,
1995.
dB/decade, attributable to white noise.
J. Y.-C. Chang, A. A. Abidi, and M. Gaitan, “Large
Conclusions and Discussion Suspended Inductors on Silicon and their use in a 2-
Using two switched tuning methods, RF CMOS pm CMOS RF Amplifier,” IEEE Electron Device
oscillators are shown to obtain a wide tuning charac- Letters, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 246-248, 1993.
C. P. Yue and S.S.Wong, “On-Chip Spiral Inductors
teristic consisting of continuously tuned segments.
with Patterned Ground Shields for Si-Based RF IC’s,”
This is a practical way to accommodate the large in Symp. on VLSI Circuits,Kyoto, Japan, pp. 85-86,
shifts in the frequency of fully integrated oscillators 1997.
caused by lot-to.lot process spreads. The use of B. Razavi, “A study of phase noise in CMOS oscilla-
multi-layer inductors is shown, and also MOS tors,” IEEE J; of Solid-State Circuits,vol. 31, no. 3,
capacitors as varactors for continuous tuning. With pp. 331-343, 1996.
this method, either an array of weighted capacitors J. Craninckx, M. Steyaert, and H. Miyakawa, “A fully
may be switched in parallel with a single oscillator integrated spiral-LC CMOS VCO set with prescaler
core, or one of an array of mult$e oscillator cores for GSM and DCS-1800systems,” in Custom IC
Con$, Santa Clara, CA, pp. 403-406, 1997.
may be selected, each tuned by inductors of various
J. Craninckx and M. Steyaert, “A 1.8-GHzLow-Phase-
sizes. Noise CMOS VCO Using Optimized Hollow Spiral
In the RF context, the quality of a particular Inductors,” IEEE J; of Solid-State Circuits,vol. 32,
oscillator may bc gauged by its tuning range, the no. 5, pp. 736-744, 1997.
oscillation frequency (fbc), and the normalized

Table 1

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 4 cs-s 1.43
N
3 1.39
5;
1.35
3
U
2 1.31
U

1.27

0 1 2 3
Switch FETVG,V
Figure 5 : Measured tuning range with fixed switched
Figure 1: MOS capacitor presents an average capaci- capacitor. Three measured values of SSB phase noise
tance to a large signal that varies with bias. indBc/Hz at 100kHz offset are given, as well as the
supply current.

Figure 2: Multi-layer spiral inductor and +15

two-terminal circuit model. Examples combined output.
of model parameters: { 13.1nH, Rs=37Q
203fF, 14Q} or {8.7nH, Rs=28Q,171fF, 2SsZ>.

Figure 3,: Principle of

switched tuning
element to cover a wide 0 1 2 3
frequency range. MOS Cao Vc,V
Figure 7: Measured frequenci-tuning characteristics
of array. Continuous tuning is with MOS capacitor,
,I ,".- "c discrete steps by selecting oscillators with different
inductors. Phase noise at 100 kHz offset shown.

P
c

Figure 4:Oscillator tuned with

10' lo2 io3 io4 10' lo6
switched capacitor; layout of Offset Frequency,Hz
RF switch FET Figure 8: Typical measured actual phase noise plot.

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