ARTICLE IN PRESS

Microelectronics Journal 39 (2008) 1687 1692

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Microelectronics Journal
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mejo

Design formula for band-switching capacitor array in wide tuning range

low-phase-noise LC-VCO
Hwann-Kaeo Chiou , Hsien-Jui Chen, Hsien-Yuan Liao, Shuw-Guann Lin, Yin-Cheng Chang
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, No. 300, Jhongda Road, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County 32001, Taiwan

a r t i c l e in fo

abstract

Article history:
Received 30 November 2007
Received in revised form
9 May 2008
Accepted 19 May 2008
Available online 7 July 2008

A low phase noise with wide tuning range complementary LC cross-coupled voltage control oscillator
(LC-VCO) using 0.18 mm CMOS technology is presented. This paper proposes a design formula for the
choice of the value of varactor (DCvar) and band switch capacitor (Cs) for the binary-weighted bandswitching LC tank which is convenient to determine the proper tuning constant for wideband, lowphase-noise operations. This general formula considers the ratio of frequency overlap (ov) and all the
parasitic effects from band-switching capacitor array and transistors. The designed VCO using a 4-bit
band-switching capacitor array demonstrates the operating frequencies from 4.166 to 5.537 GHz with
an equivalent tuning bandwidth of 28.26%. The measured tuning range of all sub-bands is well agreed
with that of the post-layout simulation results. The measured phase noise is 123.1 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz
offset in the 5.2 GHz band. The calculated gure-of-merit (FoM) of this VCO was as high as 187 dB.
When considering the tuning bandwidth the designed VCO obtains a FoM-bandwidth product of 52.83,
which is much better than previously published works.
& 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Voltage control oscillator (VCO)
Wideband
Band switch
LC tank
Tuning range
Low phase noise
CMOS
Wireless LAN

1. Introduction
Voltage control oscillator (VCO) is an important building block
in RF systems, and it is characterized by the performance of phase
noise, frequency tuning range and DC power consumption. Many
literature reports dealing with the low-phase-noise techniques
in narrow-band VCO design have been published in [13].
Nowadays, communication system has already turned to multibands and multi-standards applications. Recently, several studies
have been conducted regarding the method to provide a wide
tuning range and maintain the low phase noise [46]. It becomes
difcult for VCO to meet the specications with wideband tuning
range, low phase noise and low power consumption simultaneously. The VCO with wide tuning range usually requires a larger
tuning constant (KVCO) and a higher DC power consumption than
the narrow-band VCO does. A large KVCO not only degrades the
phase noise due to its large FM modulation but also consumes a
large amount of DC power to start up the oscillation. Therefore,
the specications of power consumption, tuning range and phase
noise are usually the trade-off among them in wideband LC-VCO
design. The band-switching capacitor array is the most commonly
used method in LC tank to solve this problem. Meanwhile, the

 Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 3 426 9021; fax: +886 3 425 5830.

E-mail address: hkchiou@ee.ncu.edu.tw (H.-K. Chiou).

0026-2692/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mejo.2008.05.007

switching capacitor array is also used to calibrate the frequency

drifting under the process variation. Although this technique has
been widely used in VCO design, the choice of the switching
capacitor usually relies on the designers experience. Few guidelines or criteria for the switching capacitor design have been
discussed in published literature. One major design parameter, the
ratio of frequency overlap (ov), has seldom been taken into
account in published works. In this paper, the authors proposed a
general formula for the binary-weighted band-switching capacitor array in LC tank to obtain the proper tuning constant and
achieve the performance of both low phase noise and wide
frequency tuning range.

2. Formula for binary-weighted band-switching LC tank

Fig. 1 shows the binary-weighted band-switching LC tank,
which consists of an inductor and capacitor array. Fig. 2 illustrates
the schematic diagram of the VCO, the device size of each
transistor, inductance and capacitance of LC tank. The capacitance
of the capacitor array comprises the varactor (Cvar) for the ne
tuning of the oscillation frequency, the band select switching
capacitor (Cs) for the coarse tuning, the parasitic capacitor of the
MOS switch (Csw) and the parasitic capacitor (Cp) from VCO core
circuit (Mn1, Mn2 and Mp1, Mp2) and buffer amplier (Mn3, Mn4 and
Mp3, Mp4). An example of 2-bit band-switching VCO is used for the

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H.-K. Chiou et al. / Microelectronics Journal 39 (2008) 16871692

f osc band_2

2p

1
q
LC p 2n  2C s kC sw 2n  3C s DC var

(2)

f osc band_3

2p
Fig. 1. The binary-weighted band-switching LC tank.

1
q
LC p 2n  3C s kC sw 2n  2C s DC var

(3)

f osc band_4

1
q
n
2p LC p 2  4C s kC sw 2n  1C s DC var

(4)

where DCvar CmaxCmin, Cmax is the maximum capacitance of

the varactor, Cmin is the minimum capacitance of the varactor,
CsJCsw is the parallel capacitor when the band switch turns off.
If n is selected as 2, from Eq. (1), the equivalent switch
capacitances are 3  (CsJCsw) and 0  Cs, respectively. The value of
Cs is zero because no switch turns on at the rst band. The
equivalent capacitance of the band switch equals the parallel
capacitances of Cs and Csw (CsJCsw).
The oscillation frequency of each sub-band is normalized by
the rst band to derive the tuning ratio (Ki) and can be rewritten.
Ki is dened as the change of capacitance divided by total
capacitance in the tank.

Fig. 2. The schematic representation of the VCO (WMn1/L WMn2/L 30 mm/0.18 mm,
WMp1/L WMp2/L 90 mm/0.18 mm, WMn3/L WMn4/L 6 mm/0.18 mm, WMp3/L
WMp4/L 27 mm/0.18 mm, L 0.312 nH, DCvar 0.403 pF, and Cs 0.201 pF).

Fig. 3. The tuning characteristic of 2-bits band switching (overlap ratio 12).

simplicity of the exposition and to derive the formula. Fig. 3 shows

the frequency tuning characteristic using a 2-bit band-switching
capacitor. In such a conguration, the bit number (n) of the band
switch is selected as 2, which can generate four sub-bands with a
lower KVCO. The ov is denoted as the ratio of frequency overlap
between the adjacent bands, which is usually chosen as 12. When
the switch turns on, the additional capacitances will reduce the
original tuning ratio of the varactor. As can be seen, KVCO of the
second band is smaller than that in the rst band. The explicit
expressions of the oscillation frequency (fosc) for the four subbands are given as
f osc band_1
1
q
2p LC p 2n  1C s kC sw 2n  4C s DC var

(1)

K 1 band_1
q
C p 2n  1C s kC sw 2n  4C s DC var
q 1
C p 2n  1C s kC sw 2n  4C s DC var

(5)

q
C p 2n  1C s kC sw 2n  4C s DC var
K 2 band_2 q
C p 2n  2C s kC sw 2n  3C s DC var

(6)

q
C p 2n  1C s kC sw 2n  4C s DC var
K 3 band_3 q
C p 2n  3C s kC sw 2n  2C s DC var

(7)

q
C p 2n  1C s kC sw 2n  4C s DC var
K 4 band_4 q
C p 2n  4C s kC sw 2n  1C s DC var

(8)

The tuning ratio of each sub-band Ki, as given in Eqs. (5)(8), is

normalized to the tuning ratio of K1. The overall tuning range (TR)
is thus expressed as

TR 1  ov f osc band_1  K 1  f osc band_1  K 2 

f band_1  K 4 
(9)
f osc band_1  K 3  osc
1  ov
In order to provide more design insight, Cp and Csw are omitted
from Eqs. (5)(8) and can be rewritten as
p
DC var
(10)
K 1 p 1
0C s DC var
p
p
1
DC var
K 2 p p 0:816
1C s DC var
0:5 1

(11)

p
p
1
DC var
K 3 p p 0:707
2C s DC var
11

(12)

p
p
1
DC var
K 4 p p 0:632
3C s DC var
1:5 1

(13)

The resulting equations hold under the conditions of n 2 and

ov 12. Because ov equals 12, the value of Cs is chosen as half of

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H.-K. Chiou et al. / Microelectronics Journal 39 (2008) 16871692

DCvar. Finally, it can be arranged as an equation for the tuning

range and a general formula as shown in Eq. (14) can be obtained:

TR 1  12 f osc band_1  1 f osc band_1  0:816
)
f band_1  0:632
f osc band_1  0:707 osc
1  12
" 2
#
nX
1
K n2
1  ovf osc band_1
Ki
(14)
1  ov
i1
From Eq. (14), TR, ov and n are obtained to derive the tuning
range of band_1. The oscillation frequency (f0) is then used to
choose DCvar and Cs. In an ideal case, the tuning characteristic of
band_1 usually has a steep slope if Cp and Csw are omitted.
However, it shows a gradual slope in practical implementation
when parasitics exist. Nevertheless, Eq. (14) is still useful to
estimate the preliminary values of DCvar and Cs in wide frequency
tuning range VCO design.

3. VCO circuit design

3.1. Start-up condition
Fig. 3 shows the circuit topology of VCO comprising complementary cross-coupled pairs and LC tank and output buffer. In
order to achieve better performance of the phase noise, a 4-bit
band switch is used to lower the KVCO of each sub-band. Eq. (15)
illustrates the start-up condition of an oscillator:
RT2pf 0 Q 2 r s

2pf 0 L2
1
rs

; gm X
RT 2pf 0 L2
rs

(15)

where RT(2pf0) is the parallel equivalent resistance of the tank, Q

is the quality factor of the tank, rs isp
the
series equivalent
resistance of the tank and f 0 1=2p LC is the oscillation
frequency.
It indicates that the oscillation condition is limited in RT(2pf0)
for a wide tuning range VCO design [4]. The RT(2pf0) usually
changes in a wide frequency variation. As observed from Eq. (15),
while all of the band switches turn on, the parasitic capacitor
reaches the maximum value and the VCO operates at the lowest
frequency band. Meanwhile, the associated RT(2pf0) has the
smallest value. Although the VCO can stably oscillate at the
highest band at a constant biased current, it may fail to oscillate in
the lowest band. This is because of the RT(2pf0) at the lowest band
(i.e., the tank has the maximum Cs), which is smaller than that at
the highest band (i.e. the tank has the minimum Cs). That is to say,
the low RT(2pf0) may cause gm  RT(2pf0) to be smaller than 1
and fail to oscillate. This phenomenon restricts the low band
oscillation of a wideband VCO and thus limits the tuning range.

quality factor (Q) of tank, the higher the output power, the lower
the KVCO and the lower F can improve the phase noise. To reduce
the tank parasitic resistance, a high Q inductor is recommended.
Noise ltering technique is adopted to reduce the current source
noise from 2o0+Do0 and o0+Do0 down and up conversions [8].
The thermal and icker noise of the transistor are dependent on
the MOS device size. The larger the device size, the lower the
icker noise and the thermal noise. The band switches also
contribute thermal noise, which is dependent on the MOS
equivalent resistance (Ron). A large size ratio (W/L) of the band
switch is chosen to lower the noise. As can be observed in Eq. (16),
the phase noise can be improved by increasing the bias current
(increasing power dissipation at xed Vdd) or inductance in the
tank; namely, the VCO operates in current limit or inductor limit
regime. However, when the output voltage swing is limited by Vdd
and the waveform of VCO is rectied, the phase noise cannot be
further improved even by increasing the bias current. At this point
in time, VCO operates at the voltage-limited regime. The
minimum phase noise occurs at the boundary of current- and
voltage-limited regime [9]. This phenomenon has been checked
by a simulator in this work. Fig. 4 shows the voltage swing at the
tank of all sub-bands while switching the band switch in turn. At
the highest band, the voltage swing has been adjusted to the
maximum which is near the voltage difference between Vdd and
tail current node. Under this circumstance, no more phase noise
can be further improved even with increase in the bias current. It
reaches the boundary of current- and voltage-limited regimes.
This is the optimal biasing point of VCO design. While turning on
the switch step-by-step to reach the lowest band, the voltage
swing becomes gradually small. The phase noise degrades due to
the smaller equivalent tank impedance. Under such circumstance,
a convenient way to maintain good phase noise performance at
the lowest band is by increasing the bias current to enlarge the
swing at the tank. On the other hand, if the lowest band operates
at optimal bias to achieve the lowest phase noise, an excessive
voltage swing appears in higher bands due to the decrease of
parasitics from band switch array. This too large voltage swing
exceeds the optimal bias and consequently wastes power. Thus,
the trade-off between phase noise and power consumption should
be made in the wideband VCO design. The use of large device size
for VCO core transistors allows the increasing bias current to reach
maximal output swing up to near Vdd, that is to say, the VCO
enters into voltage-limit operation. However, the larger size of the
transistors inherently has larger parasitic capacitance, which
results in a smaller inductor for a desired resonant frequency.

2.0

where Df is the offset frequency from the carrier frequency f0, F is

an empirical parameter that describes the thermal noise and the
icker noise of the transistor, kLC is a constant associated with the
L and C values in the tank, Po is the RF power produced by the VCO
and Vn is the noise voltage. As can be observed, the higher the

Highest
Band

1.8

Lowest
Band

1.6
1.4
Voltage (V)

3.2. Phase noise considerations

Eq. (16) shows the modied Leesons formula [7], which offers
a design guide to improve the phase noise of an oscillator:
(
2 


f0
FKT
f
1 c
LDf ; K VCO 10 log
2P o
2Q Df
Df

2 )
K VCO V n

(16)
2kLC Df

1689

1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
0.0

100.0p

200.0p

300.0p

Time (Sec)
Fig. 4. The voltage swing at the tank of all sub-bands.

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H.-K. Chiou et al. / Microelectronics Journal 39 (2008) 16871692

3.3. Derive the values of varactor (DCvar) and switch capacitor (Cs)
In this complementary LC-VCO conguration, the bias of the
gate terminal of n-, p-MOS is set to near half of Vdd. According to
Eq. (15), increase in both device size and inductor increases the
bias current and RT(2pf0), which enhances the swing to meet the
oscillation condition. The overall gure-of-merit (FoM) of VCO
must be considered at the same time. At a xed operating
frequency f0, with increase in the inductance in the tank, the
capacitance will decrease. The associated RT(2pf0) and output
swing increase as expressed in Eq. (15). Hence, the optimal value
of inductor is chosen to let VCO swing at the boundary of currentand voltage-limited regimes. In this design, the inductance is
chosen as 0.312 nH (half circuit) to meet this requirement. The
corresponding Cp of the VCO core circuit is 0.223 pF and it should
be taken care in practical implementation. Because the capacitance of tank is still unknown, the parasitic capacitance is omitted
to obtain the initial tuning ratio as derived from Eqs. (10)(13).
Eq. (17) shows the overall tuning range when n is selected as 4:

TR 1  ov f osc band_1  K 1  f osc band_1  K 2 

f band_1  K 16 
f osc band_1  K 3     osc
1  ov


1 
1
f osc band_1  1 f osc band_1  0:816
2
)
f band_1  0:342
(17)
f osc band_1  0:707    osc
1  12
Assume the value of ov is 12. For an overall tuning range from 4 to
5.6 GHz, the calculated high and low frequencies in band_1
according to Eq. (17) are 5.6 and 5.2092 GHz, respectively.
Fig. 5 is used to derive the values of DCvar and Cs. In this case,
given the values of frequencies of band_1 (5.6 and 5.2092 GHz)
and inductor (0.312 nH), the required total capacitances for these
two frequencies are 2.588 and 2.991 pF, respectively. Hence, the
tuning varactor must provide this capacitance difference, i.e.,
(DCvar) 2.9912.588 pF 0.403 pF, and Cs is chosen as half of
this value (0.201 pF) to obtain ov equal to 12. The required DCvar is
implemented with a constant capacitor (Ccon) plus Cvar. The
simulated oscillation frequency is below the initial guess oscilla-

Frequency, f0 (Hz)

5.6 G

2.588 pF

Band_1

Cs = (1-ov)(Cvar)

Cvar = 0.403 pF

390.7 M

2.991 pF
5.209 G
f0 =
L = 0.312 nH

tion frequency due to the existence of parasitic capacitance from

the cross-coupled transistors, buffer amplier and band-switching
MOS. Thus, lesser capacitance than the original Ccon should be
used to compensate for the redundant parasitic capacitor.
Fig. 6 shows the pre-layout simulated tuning range of a 4-bit
band-switching VCO. The overall tuning range is 1.893 GHz and is
larger than the original value of 1.6 GHz. This can be attributed the
absence of Cp and results in a steep slope of Ki between two
sub-bands. An extra term for Cp should be added to modify
Eqs. (10)(13). The modied equations for Ki of 16 sub-bands are
shown in Eqs. (18)(21). For simplicity, they only shows the
modied Km1, Km2, Km3 and Km16 as
p
C p DC var
K m1 p 1
C p 0C s DC var

(18)

p
C p DC var
K m2 p 0:869
C p 1C s DC var

(19)

p
C p DC var
K m3 p 0:779
C p 2C s DC var

(20)

6.0G

5.5G
Frequency (Hz)

The smaller inductor possesses the higher quality factor and small
equivalent tank resistance that lead to a lower output swing.
Therefore, the lower the inductance the better the phase noise.
However, it must spend more power consumption in LC-VCO. The
optimized phase noise design should be compromised among
device size, inductance and power consumption. To satisfy the
oscillation condition of all sub-bands, the swing of the tank must
be large enough to ensure the lowest band oscillation.

5.0G

4.5G

4.0G

3.5G
0.0

0.6

0.8 1.0
Vtune (V)

1.2

1.4

1.6

1.8

5.4
5.2
5.0
4.8
4.6
4.4

2LC

4.2

Fig. 5. The schematic diagram of VCO tuning characteristic to derive the value of
varactor Cvar and switch capacitor Cs (L 0.312 nH, fosc(band_1) 390 MHz).

0.4

5.6

Vtune

0.2

Fig. 6. Pre-layout simulation result of the tuning range (DCvar 0.403 pF,
Cs 0.201 pF, L 0.312 nH, and Cp 0.223 pF).

Frequency (GHz)

1690

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8
1.0
Vtune (V)

1.2

1.4

Fig. 7. Post-layout simulation result of the tuning range.

1.6

1.8

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(21)

It can be seen from Eqs. (18)(21) that the slope of Ki changed

more gradually than that in Eqs. (10)(13) due to the presence of
Cp. By substituting Kmi into Eq. (17), the overall tuning range
equals 1.811 GHz, which is close to the pre-simulated value of
tuning range (1.893 GHz).
After the pre-layout simulation, EM-simulation is required to
extract the parasitic inductors and capacitors produced by those
metal lines. The post-layout simulation of tuning range is shown
in Fig. 7.

4. Experimental results
The VCO was fabricated in TSMC 0.18 mm CMOS technology.
The optimal device size of this VCO is illustrated in Fig. 3, and the
chip photo is shown in Fig. 8. This chip consists of a VCO and

1:100 kHz -98.2151 dBc/Hz

2:1 MHz -123.1022 dBc/Hz

-40
Phase Noise (dBc/Hz)

p
C p DC var
K m16 p 0:414
C p 15C s DC var

1691

-60
-80
1
-100
2

-120
Measurement
Simulation

-140
1k

10k

100k
1M
Frequency Offset (Hz)

10M

Fig. 10. The simulation and measured phase noise of the VCO.

5.6G

Frequency (Hz)

5.4G
5.2G
5.0G
4.8G
4.6G
4.4G
4.2G
Fig. 8. Die photograph of the fabricated VCO.

0.0

0.4

0.6

0.8 1.0
Vtune (V)

1.2

1.4

1.6

Fig. 11. The measured tuning range of the fabricated VCO.

10
0

0.2

>1: 5.40924182 GHz

-7.5906 dBm

Output Power (dBM)

-10
-20
-30
-40
-50
-60
-70
-80
-90
5.030

5.032

5.034
5.036
Frequency (GHz)

5.038

Fig. 9. The measured output spectrum of the VCO.

5.040

Fig. 12. Phase noise is inversely proportional to output power.

1.8

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H.-K. Chiou et al. / Microelectronics Journal 39 (2008) 16871692

Table 1
Performance comparisons of the recently published VCO design
Ref.

Tech. (mm)

fosc (GHz) and BW

Phase noise (dBc/Hz)

foffset (MHz)/f0 (GHz)

Power (mW)

FOM (dB)

FOM  BW (dB)

[1]
[2]
[3]
[5]
[10]
[11]
This work

0.18
0.18
0.18
0.18
0.25
0.25
0.18

4.615 (8.3%)
5.135.33 (3.8%)
5.33
5.005.42 (8.06%)
5.025.35 (6.47%)
4.325.3 (20.37%)
4.1665.537 (28.25%)

120.9
126
147.3
125
117
114.6
123.1

1/5.0
1/5.33
10/5.33
1/5.25
1/5.35
1/4.95
1/5.16

3
17.2
14
4.2
6.9
4.3
10.8

189.6
188.2
190.4
195.2
183.1
182.1
187

15.74
7.15
NA
15.7
11.85
37.1
52.83

a divider (the divider is not presented in this paper). The die size
of this circuit is 1 1.15 mm2. The circuits are measured via onwafer probing with four external bond-wires to control the band
switch bits.
The measurements were performed with AgilentTM signal
source analyzer (SSA) E5052A. Fig. 9 shows the output spectrum
and output power of the fabricated VCO. The output power is
7.59 dBm. Fig. 10 shows the simulat and the measured phase
noises are 123.6 and 123.1 dBc/Hz, respectively, at 1 MHz offset
over the 5.2 GHz band. The measured results present a predictive
accuracy approximately equivalent to the calculated data. Fig. 11
depicts the tuning characteristics by switching a 4-bit switch
capacitor array. The VCO operates from 4.166 to 5.537 GHz with
28.25% tuning range. As compared in Fig. 7, the measured tuning
range of all sub-bands is well agreed with the post-layout
simulation result. The dc power dissipation of VCO core and
buffer amplier consumes currents of 6 and 2 mA from a 1.8 V
supply. The FoM of this VCO is calculated as high as 187 dB. In
favor of a properly piecewise KVCO design, the better performance
of VCO may be attributed to the optimized bias condition for
power-saving which keeps VCO operation near the boundary
of voltage and current limit regimes at the highest band, and
other bands to be close to this regime. In addition, this VCO shows
phase noise of 121.3 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset of the 5.4 GHz,
122.6 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset of the 5.27 GHz, 120.2 dBc/Hz at
1 MHz offset of the 4.87 GHz, and 119.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset of
the 4.76 GHz. The variation of phase noise from low to high
depends on the swept frequency from high to low. This is because
the equivalent tank resistance becomes smaller at the lowest band
than that at the highest band under a constant current bias.
Leesons formula states that the phase noise is partially dependent
on the output power of the VCO; Fig. 12 reveals this tendency. It
indicates that the phase noise is inversely proportional to output
power. Only if the output power exceeds the boundary of currentand voltage-limited regimes [9], it shows the degradation of phase
noise when frequency is tuned up to 5.2 GHz. Table 1 summarizes

the overall performance of recent VCO designs. Note that the

product of FoM and tuning bandwidth reveals a performance
index of VCO if considering the trade-off of tuning bandwidth
and phase noise. As can be seen, this design presents a FoMbandwidth product of 52.83, which is much better than those in
previously published works.

Acknowledgments
This paper is partially supported by the National Science
Council of the Republic of China under Contract No. NSC 96-2628E-008-001-MY3. The National Chip Implementation Center (CIC)
and TSMC for chip fabrication are also acknowledged.
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