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Published in IET Circuits, Devices & Systems
Received on 17th October 2012
Accepted on 10th April 2013
doi: 10.1049/iet-cds.2013.0098

ISSN 1751-858X

Dual-band quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator

using differential inner-diamond-structure switchable
inductor
Pei-Kang Tsai1, Tzuen-Hsi Huang1, Yu-Ting Chen2
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
2
Display Mixed-Signal Division, Fitipower Integrated Technology Inc., Hsinchu 300, Taiwan
E-mail: thhuang@ee.ncku.edu.tw

Abstract: A dual-band quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) with high gure-of-merits (FOMs) and cost-area
efciency is presented by integrating with differential inner-diamond-structure switchable inductors which have improved
performances. This proposed QVCO is fabricated in a 0.18-m complementary metal-oxide semiconductor process with an
active-region area of 0.61 mm2. The QVCO core totally consumes 6.8 mA from 1.8 V supply voltage. The frequency tuning
ranges are 120 MHz (from 3.18 to 3.3 GHz) for the low-band and 500 MHz (from 6.94 to 7.44 GHz) for the high-band,
while the tuning voltage rises from 0 to 1.8 V. The best phase noises with an offset frequency of 1 MHz from the oscillation
frequency in the low- and high-bands are 121.9 and 117.5 dBc/Hz, respectively. The measured phase errors in both high-
band and low-band are less than 1. The calculated FOMs, no matter the switch is off or on, are better than 180 dBc/Hz.

1 Introduction single-end VCOs. For chip area consideration, switchable

Recently, the function trend of modern communication
transceivers moves from single-standard single-band [1] to
multi-standard multi-band [2, 3]. Developing a dual-band
recongurable transceiver to cover multiple standards is not
only helpful for the data-rate enhancement but also for the
cost down signicantly. But the circuit design difculty of
recongurable dual-band transceivers is usually higher than
that of single-band ones. Although transformer-based
dual-band oscillator designs, like differential voltage-
controlled oscillator (VCO) in [4] and quadrature
voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCOs) in [5, 6], have
achieved wide tuning range and low phase noise, the band
switching highly depends on magnetic coupling coefcient
of the transformers. The precise device characterisation of
on-chip transformers has become a critical need for the
band switching design in the transformer-based oscillators.
The way of using a switched LC-resonator to provide a
dual-band operation, which is set by metal-oxide
semiconductor (MOS) transistors, can be implemented with
switched capacitors [7] and/or switched inductors [810]. In
such switched LC-resonators, the way of using a switched
inductor exhibits the benets in the capability of making a
trade-off between the gain and the power consumption by
an optimal composition of inductance and capacitance [9].
However, dual-band VCOs [8, 10] using switched inductors
usually occupy relatively large chip area than those ones
using switched capacitors; such condition becomes critical
in QVCO designs since the QVCOs usually need a double
number of inductors as compared with differential or
inductors using merged layout structure [9] are proposed for
saving the area signicantly, but the quality factor
degradation will worsen the phase noise of an oscillator
when the switch is turned on. Switched-inductor-based
dual-band QVCOs like that reported in [9] would have
lower circuit complexity, but the design trade-off between
the chip area and quality factor degradation makes the
overall circuit optimisation limited.
In this work, a differential inner-diamond-structure (IDS)
switchable inductor, which has been rst introduced in [11],
is embedded to a dual-band QVCO design. The proposed
IDS switchable inductor can mitigate the quality factor
degradation caused by the merged layout. Therefore the
QVCO can be optimised in phase noise and chip area
simultaneously for achieving better gure-of-merits (FOMs)
with low circuit complexity.
2 Switchable inductor design consideration
Fig. 1 shows the schematic of a switchable inductor.
Generally, the oscillation frequency of an LC-tuned
oscillator can be expressed as
1
fOSC = 















(1)
2p LTOTAL CTOTAL
where CTOTAL is the sum of variable capacitance (CVAR) and
parasitic capacitance (CPARA); LTOTAL is the inductance of
switchable inductor composed of LOUT and LIN. When the

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Fig. 1 Schematic of differential switchable inductor
Fig. 2 Photograph and its diagram with device dimensions of the
differential switchable inductor in traditional merged layout
switch is turned off (at the OFF state), the total inductance
(LTOTAL) is equal to LIN + LOUT. When the switch is turned
on (at the ON state), the inductor LIN will be excluded and
LTOTAL becomes equal to LOUT only. The traditional
differential switchable inductor is implemented by four
individual inductors (LIN1, LIN2, LOUT1 and LOUT2) [8] or
two differential inductors (LIN and LOUT) [10]. In such a
way, the switchable inductor will consume a large chip
Fig. 3 Equivalent lumped-circuit model with tting parameters of traditional merged differential switchable inductor shown in Fig. 2
IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 6, pp. 368375
doi: 10.1049/iet-cds.2013.0098
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area. In order to shrink the chip area of a switchable
inductor like that reported in [8], the LIN can be folded into
the hollow region of LOUT to merge the individual inductors
together.
The traditional differential switchable inductor using
merged layout and its diagram with dimension parameters
are shown in Fig. 2. Although the merged layout structure
can save the chip area signicantly, it is reported that the
traditional merged switchable inductor suffers from several
parasitic effects [9], since the metal lines of inner and outer
coils are layouted in parallel. Besides the skin effect which
results in an increase of total resistance, there are some
other parasitic effects that also increase the inductors
effective resistance. At the ON state, the eddy current
induced in the inner inductor coil will cancel a part of the
magnetic ux generated by the outer inductor. At the OFF
state, the proximity effect will be the main reason of metal
loss in this structure. On the other hand, the substrate loss
has to be considered at both the OFF and ON states [11].
All these parasitic effects will induce additional losses to
degrade the quality factor of switchable inductors. Hence,
how to reduce these parasitic effects and minimise the
losses under the same chip area is an important issue for
switchable inductor design.
3 Parasitic effects in merged layout
To characterise and analyse the parasitic effects in the merged
layout, a differential switchable inductor shown in Fig. 2 has
been fabricated in a 0.18 m CMOS process. Fig. 3 presents
the equivalent lumped-circuit model for tting the measured
quality factor and inductance of the merged differential
switchable inductor. In this model, COX, CSUB and RSUB
together account for the substrate loss effect; ROUT and RIN
are the resistances of the outer and inner inductors,
respectively. ROUT and RIN are composed of the resistance
of coil and the parasitic resistance caused by the skin effect.
(L1 + LOUT) and LIN are the inductances of the outer and
inner inductors, respectively. CP is the parasitic capacitance
between the inner and outer inductors; K is the coupling
coefcient between the inner and outer inductors. CPIN is
the parasitic capacitance in the inner inductor; KIN is the
self-coupling coefcient in the inner inductor. Besides, KPR,
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LPR and RPR together account for the proximity effect which
causes the metal loss at the OFF state. The tting parameters
are given at the bottom of Fig. 3. The comparisons of
inductance and quality factor between the measured and
modelling results are shown in Figs. 4a and b.
In traditional non-merged switchable inductors, the
coupling coefcient K and the proximity effect coupling
coefcient KPR are usually ignored in the lump-circuit
model. From our tting results for the switchable inductor
with the parameters shown in Fig. 3, K and KPR obviously
cannot be ignored for the merged layout. The relationship
between the substrate loss and layout structure, which leads
to a different value of K, is referred to power loss density
prole in the substrate [11]. In this paper, the effects of K
on the substrate loss will be studied at both the OFF and
ON states. On the other hand, the effects of KPR accounting
for the proximity effect will be discussed in metal loss
analysis at the OFF state only.

3.1 Substrate loss

Figs. 4a and b also show the modelling inductance and

quality factor for K = 0.52 with 50% variations. It is clear
that both the inductance and quality factor are varied with
different K. The simplied single-ended parallel model
cited from [12], as shown in inset of Fig. 5, is adopted for
characterising our switchable inductor by tting varied Fig. 5 Measured and modelling results of inductance and quality
inductance and quality factor. RP,eff and CP mainly represent factor at the OFF state when considering the proximity effect
As KPR = 0.52 varied with 50%. The inset is the single-ended parallel
model

the effective parasitic resistance and parasitic capacitance of

the substrate. CS is the overlap capacitance caused by the
metal-line underpasses. LS,eff and RS,eff represent the series
inductance and resistance of the switchable inductor after
the transformer action. To simplify our analysis, the RS,eff
only takes into account the resistance of coils and the
parasitic resistance caused by the skin effect and proximity
effect. However, RS,eff is dominated by the resistance of the
primary coils. Therefore CS and RS,eff are taken to be
independent of K in our analysis.
From such a simplied model [12], the quality factor can
be expressed as

 
vLS,eff RP,eff
Q=
 2 
RS,eff R + vLS,eff /RS,eff +1 RS,eff
P,eff

R2S,eff Cs + Cp 
1 v2 LS,eff Cs + Cp
LS,eff

(2)
 
v LS,eff
= [substrate loss factor]
RS,eff (3)
[self -resonance factor]

Among the parameters shown in the second term, RP,eff

Fig. 4 Measured and modelling results
a Inductance
b Quality factor of the traditional merged switchable inductor shown in
Fig. 2. As K = 0.52 varied with 50%
directly dominates the quality factor performance if RP,eff >
(Q 2RS,eff ). Increasing the RP,eff will improve the quality
factor directly [12], since RP,eff represents the loss caused
by the substrate. Therefore the extracted RP,eff from the
tting results of inductance and quality factor can interpret

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Table 1 Summary of the fitting parameters of single-ended
parallel model for the correlation between K and Q
OFF-state at Fitting parameters Q factor (Q%)
2.5 GHz
LS,eff, nH RS,eff, RP,eff,
K = 0.78 4.06 9.2 1407 4.44 ( + 3%)
K = 0.52 3.56 9.2 1580 4.31 (0%)
K = 0.26 3.07 9.2 2007 4.09 (5%)
ON-state at 7 GHz
K = 0.78 1.14 9.6 3600 4.8 (15%)
K = 0.52 1.32 9.6 5800 5.63 (0%)
K = 0.26 1.43 9.6 12 600 6.22 (+10%)
well the concrete characteristic of substrate losses with
relation to different K. Let the constant parameters CS, CP
and RS,eff be denoted as a set of {CS, CP, RS,eff}. They are
{20 fF, 131 fF, 9.2 } at the OFF state and {0 fF, 5 fF,
9.6 } at the ON state for our study case in Figs. 4a and b.
The tting parameters of LS,eff and RP,eff values related with
K are shown in Table 1. It is noted that the quality factor is
evaluated at 2.5 GHz for the OFF state and at 7 GHz for the
ON state because of the consideration of dual-band
oscillator operation desired. A higher value of K leads to a
lower RP,eff in the single-ended parallel model at both the
OFF and ON states. From Table 1, it is observed that
the dependences of LS,eff on the coupling coefcient K at
the OFF and ON states are different. At the OFF state,
single-ended inductance LS,eff is derived from the original
differential structure, so higher K will lead to higher
inductance LS,eff (e.g. from 3.07 to 4.06 nH as K raised
from 0.26 to 0.78). On the other hand, at the ON state, the
induced close-looped opposite-directional eddy current will
cancel a part of the magnetic ux that resulted from the
outer inductor. Therefore, a higher value of K will lead to
decrease of LS,eff (e.g. from 1.43 to 1.14 nH as K raised
from 0.26 to 0.78).
From (3), it is clear that the quality factor also depends on
LS,eff as well as the self-resonance factor, besides the substrate
loss factor. The self-resonance factor itself is also a function
of LS,eff. At the OFF state, the value of inductance LS,eff is
inherently greater than that at the ON state below the
self-resonance frequency. Therefore the quality factor at
the OFF state is greater than that at the ON state when the
operation frequency is of the same. From Table 1, it is
noted that the quality factor at the OFF state is much
insensitive to value of K because the variation in RP,eff is
smaller than that at the ON state.
3.2 Metal loss
Conduction resistance of the coil and parasitic resistance due
to the skin effect and proximity effect are the main reasons for
the metal loss of an inductor. The losses due to the coil
resistance involving the skin effect in the merged and
non-merged differential switchable inductors are common.
But the proximity effects on the merged and non-merged
inductors are quite different from each other. In merged
layout, the proximity effect between the inner and outer
inductors is an important issue at the OFF state. At the ON
state, only eddy current exists in the inner part of coil,
hence the proximity effect will be concerned at the OFF
state only.
IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 6, pp. 368375
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In general multi-turn inductors, the proximity effect is
caused by the magnetic ux density (B) induced from
adjacent coil. Such magnetic ux density will produce eddy
current within the coil to subtract the excitation current in
the outside of coil; then the current density is gathered in
the inside of coil to increase the current crowding effect.
From [13], the induced E eld for eddy current within the
coil in point form can be expressed as
Ey
E = jvBz (4)
x
Integration of (4) with respect to x-axis can produce eddy
current density (Jeddy) extracted from the E eld. The
simplied expressions of E eld and eddy current density
(|Jeddy|) within the coil with width W are
E(x) = jvB(x), for W /2 x W /2 (5)
 
 
Jeddy  = sE = svB(W /2) (6)
where is the conductivity of the coil. From (4)(6), the
mechanism in proximity effect is dominated by coupling
and interaction between E eld and the magnetic ux
density (B) from adjacent coil. It is complex in merged
switchable inductor since it depends on layout structure and
the distance between coils of inner and outer inductors.
In order to analyse the proximity effect conveniently in
merged switchable inductor, the equivalent model shown in
Fig. 3 includes three parameters KPR, LPR and RPR to
account for the increase in resistance due to the proximity
effect at the OFF state. Such model is based on a coupled
transformer loop [14]. The RL-ladder expression in [14] is
simplied to single resistor and inductor in series for
reducing the model complexity. The mutual inductance is
also transformed by KPR, which is the coupling coefcient
between inner and outer coils.
Fig. 5 shows the measured and modelling inductances and
quality factors when considering the proximity effect (as KPR
varied with 50%) at the OFF state. When the value of KPR
is increased from 0.52 to 0.78 (+50%) at 2.5 GHz, the
inductance (or quality factor) is decreased from 4 nH (or
4.34) to 3.4 nH (or 3.3). When the value of KPR is
decreased from 0.52 to 0.26 (50%) at 2.5 GHz, the
inductance (or quality factor) is increased from 4 nH (or
4.34) to 4.4 nH (or 5.2). Therefore, at the OFF state,
reducing KPR to mitigate the proximity effect can reduce the
effect resistance and prevent from quality factor and
inductance degradations.
3.3 Overall losses at the ON and OFF states
Through the above analysis of substrate and metal losses, the
quality factor at the ON state is dominated by coupling
coefcient K, and that at OFF state is dominated by the
proximity effect coupling coefcient KPR as well as K. At
the ON state, the quality factor can be improved by
reducing the value of K because of the reduced substrate
loss. At the OFF state, the quality factor can be improved
by decreasing the metal effective resistance caused by the
proximity effect occurred between the inner and outer
inductors. Comprehensively, considerations of the overall
losses in a switchable inductor design, K and KPR must be
decreased in switchable inductor designs.
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4 IDS switchable inductor
To reduce K and KPR in a merged switchable inductor, we
rotate the inner inductor by 45 to let the layout to be in a
diamond shape. This is so-called IDS switchable inductor.
Fig. 6 shows the photo and its diagram with dimension
parameters of the IDS switchable inductor. The testkey is
also fabricated in a 0.18-m CMOS process. As compared
with the switchable inductor shown in Fig. 2, only the inner
dimension of inner inductor (I.D.I) is slightly changed from
170 to 165 m. In an approximate manner, the inductor
geometry dimensions including I.D.I, outer dimension of
outer inductor (I.D.O) and the width of coil (w) are all
assumed to be of the same for these two structures.
The coupling effects in both traditional and IDS switchable
inductors will be checked for understanding the advantages of
this novel layout structure. The coupling coefcient K in the
switchable inductors can be expressed as
M S2 =
K = 









(7)
LIN LOUT
where LIN and LOUT are the inductances of inner and outer
inductors, respectively, and M is the mutual inductance
between LIN and LOUT. Since the geometry dimensions of
traditional and IDS inductors are of the same, the LIN and
LOUT in two structures are of the same, too. The mutual
inductance can be modied from [15] as
m indicates the coupling effect can be further reduced in the
M = 0 P cos(u) (8)
2p
where 0 represents the permeability of a vacuum; is the
length of coil; is the rotation angle of the inner inductor.
Since 0 and are constants in our study case, only cos()
and P need to be discussed in the analysis. The factor cos
() is usually ignored since = 0 in a normal layout case,
but it is an important factor due to the rotated inner
inductor. Comparing Fig. 6 with Fig. 2, the value of cos()
in IDS switchable inductor can be reduced from 1( = cos0)
to 0.7( = cos45) to make the coupling effect less than 0.7
times. In (8), the geometric dependent parameter P is

  1/2   1/2
2 2
P = ln + 1+ 1 +
GMD GMD2 GMD2
GMD
+ (9)
Fig. 6 Photograph and its diagram with device dimensions and of
the switchable inductor in IDS layout
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The parameter GMD in (6) is the geometry mean distance
[15], which means the average distance between two
laments. From (9), because is a constant parameter, it is
clear that the value of P depends on value of GMD and the
smaller value of GMD leads to higher value of P. The
parameter GMD directly depends on spacing between inner
and outer inductors since the coil width are unchanged in
these two structures. As shown in Fig. 2, the spacing
between inner and outer is S1. The effective spacing S2 of
IDS inductor is dened as the average spacing between
the inner and outer coils, as shown in Fig. 6. Assume that
the rotated inner inductor in Fig. 6 is almost lled up to the
open area of the outer inductor, and then the following
equations state the relationship between S1 and S2.
S1 = a b (10)
b
1 b
x dx = (11)
b 0 2



According to the assumption of a = 2b
S1 (a b)
= 0.828 (12)
S2 b/2
From (12), it is found that S2 is slightly greater than S1. This
proposed IDS switchable inductor. From the above
discussion, it is known that reducing the coupling factors K
in IDS switchable inductor can improve the quality factor
by reduction of substrate loss. Also, the substrate losses
reduction has been veried by electromagnetic simulation in
[11]. Since the proximity effect is reduced as the value of K
decreases, the effective value of KPR is reduced
simultaneously. Figs. 7a and b show the simulated current
ow distributions in Fig. 2 and Fig. 6 at the OFF state
(with darker area representing lower current ow). The
proximity effect is more obvious in the coil closer to centre
of inductor. Then the current crowding caused by proximity
effect is much serious in tradition switchable inductor in
Fig. 7 Simulated current ow distributions in Figs. 2 and 6 at the
OFF state
IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 6, pp. 368375
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Fig. 8 Comparison of measurement results of inductances and
quality factors of the inductors shown in Figs. 2 and 6 at both the
OFF and ON states
Fig. 6. It also veries that proximity effect is reduced to ease
the metal loss in our proposed switchable inductor.
Fig. 8 shows the measured inductances and quality factors
of the inductors shown in Figs. 2 and 6 at both the OFF and
ON states. At the OFF state, the measured inductances at
2.5 GHz are 4 and 3.7 nH for the traditional and IDS
inductors, respectively. The measured quality factors are 5.3
and 4.3 for the IDS and traditional inductors, respectively.
At the ON state, the measured inductances at 7 GHz are
both around 1.33 nH. The measured quality factors are 6.2
and 5.6 for the IDS and traditional inductors, respectively.
From the measurement data of quality factors, an amount of
23% improvement at the OFF state and an amount of 11%
improvement at the ON state can be achieved.
5 QVCO circuit design
Various kinds of QVCO topologies have been discussed in
[16]. It is concluded that the top-series QVCO (TS-QVCO)
topology can achieve better phase noise and phase accuracy
simultaneously. Hence, the TS-QVCO topology is adopted
in this work. The coupling transistor can be implemented
by NMOS or PMOS transistors. Owing to low icker noise
of PMOS, in our design, the quadrature signal generation is
achieved by the top-series coupling topology using PMOS
coupling transistors. Fig. 9 shows the schematic of the
proposed dual-band quadrature VCO. A complementary
cross-coupled pair (M1M4 and M5M8) is used for negative
resistance to compensate for the loss of the LC tank. The
PMOS coupling transistors (MCPL1MCPL2 and MCPL3
MCPL4) are adopted for the quadrature signal generation.
For the measurement consideration, output buffers in a
self-biased inverter topology, which are not shown in
Fig. 9, have been adopted to drive the 50- load.
IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 6, pp. 368375
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Fig. 9 Schematic of dual-band quadrature VCO
In the dual-band QVCO design, the performance of
switchable inductor directly affects the overall performance
of QVCO. The switchable inductors shown in Figs. 2 and 6
are incorporated into our dual-band QVCO testkeys
individually. The inner dimensions of inner inductor
( = 136 m) and outer inductor ( = 320 m) are of the same
for both inductors. Also, the line width of inner coils
( = 15 m) and outer coils ( = 30 m) are also of the same.
The wider width of outer coil is adopted for the better
quality factor at the ON state since the quality factor at the
ON state mainly depends on the series resistance of coil.
The simulated inductances of both inductors are about 2.9
nH at the OFF state (at 3.2 GHz) and 0.65 nH at the ON
state (at 7.2 GHz). The quality factors of the traditional and
IDS inductors are 3.6 and 4.6, respectively, at the OFF state
(at 3.2 GHz). Meanwhile, the quality factors are 9.6 and
12.5 for the traditional and IDS inductors, respectively, at
the ON state (at 7.2 GHz). Under the condition of almost
the same inductance values, the IDS switchable inductor
has exhibited better quality factor than the traditional one.
Based on the same circuit topology except of switchable
Fig. 10 Measured tuning ranges of the QVCO testkeys using
traditional and IDS switchable inductors
The inset is the chip photos of dual-band QVCOs using traditional and IDS
switchable inductors
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Fig. 11 Measured phase noise performances over the whole
tuning range of the QVCO testkeys at low-band (OFF-state) and
high-band (ON-state)
a Phase noise performances when VTUNE = 0 V
b Phase noise at 1 MHz offset
inductors structures, two QVCOs have been implemented in
contrast to compare the performances.
6 Experimental results
Both dual-band QVCOs using the traditional and IDS
differential switchable inductors were fabricated in a
0.18 m CMOS process and their chip photographs are
shown in the inset of Fig. 10. Since the sizes of two
switchable inductors are of the same, both the chip areas of
QVCO active region including buffer stage occupy
1.273 mm 0.48 mm ( = 0.61 mm2). The QVCOs were
characterised with an Agilent DSO-80804A (Innium
Oscilloscope) and E5052A (signal-source analyser) with
E5053A (microwave down-converter). The cores of these
QVCOs both draw 6.8 mA from a 1.8 V supply voltage. As
shown in Fig. 10, the measured tuning range of the
proposed QVCO using IDS switchable inductors is from
3.18 to 3.3 GHz at low-band (at the OFF state) or from
6.94 to 7.44 GHz at high-band (at the ON state) when the
tuning voltage was varied from 0 to 1.8 V. The measured
tuning range of the QVCO using traditional inductor is also
drawn in Fig. 10 for comparison. It is noted that the tuning
range characteristics are very similar to each other because
the two switchable inductors are carefully designed with the
similar inductances at both the OFF and ON states.
Fig. 11a shows the measured phase noises of two QVCOs
at low-band (at the OFF state) and high-band (at the ON
state). As the offset frequency is 1 MHz from the centre
frequency at VTUNE = 0 V, the measured phase noises of the
QVCO using traditional switchable inductor are 117.5 dBc/
Hz at low-band and 111.9 dBc/Hz at high-band. For using
the proposed IDS switchable inductor, the phase noises can
be improved to the level of 120.7 dBc/Hz at low-band and
118.5 dBc/Hz at high-band. It is clear that not only the
phase noises improved but also the difference in phase noises
between the OFF and ON states being less if the IDS
inductor is used. The measured phase noises at 1 MHz offset
frequency over the whole tuning range are shown in
Fig. 11b. The QVCO using IDS switchable inductor always
has better phase noise at both high-band and low-band. The
maximum improvement of phase noise is 3 dB at low-band
(VTUNE = 1.8 V) or 5.6 dB at high-band (VTUNE = 0 V). The
measured IQ phase errors at low-band and high-band are
both less than 1.
In Table 2, the performances of the QVCOs reported in this
paper are compared with some previous works [5, 6, 10]. The
transformer-based dual-band QVCOs in [5, 6] have good
FOM with wider tuning range due to switching capacitance
array. However, large design efforts in on-chip transformer
and non-constant power consumption will increase the
complexity and decrease the exibility in overall circuit
design. Dual-band QVCO [10] using non-merged structure

Table 2 Performance comparisons among the reported dual-band QVCOs

Ref. Tech. Low-band, High-band, Phase noise at low/ PDC, Area, FOM at low/
GHz GHz high-band, dBc/Hz mW mm2 high-band (average)

[5] 0.13 m 2.74.3a 8.412.4a 136/119 1424 0.84 185.3/177.5

CMOS at 3 MHz (181.4)
[6] 0.18 m 3.275.02 a
9.4811.3a
116.3/112.3 6/10 0.88 181/182 (181.5)
CMOS at 1 MHz
[10] 0.18 m 1.82.06a 4.124.89a 123.8/115.1 8.6 1.38b 181.8/180.5
CMOS at 1 MHz (181.5)
using 118.9/112.3 178.4/177.3
this traditional 0.18 m 3.183.3 6.947.44 at 1 MHz 12.24 0.61 (177.8)
work inductor CMOS
using IDS 121.9/117.5 181.4/183.4
inductor at 1 MHz (182.4)

a
Using switching capacitance array (SCA)
b
Including pads    
f PDC
FOM = L{Df } 20 log 0 + 10 log
Df 1 mW

374 IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 6, pp. 368375
The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2013 doi: 10.1049/iet-cds.2013.0098

switchable inductor will increase the chip area signicantly.
Conventionally, there are six inductors in QVCO core. Too
many inductors in QVCO will make chip area large. In this
work, two merged structure switchable inductors can indeed
reduce the chip area consumption. But traditional
switchable inductors suffer from many parasitic effects like
proximity effect and substrate loss to degrade the phase
noise. Since the IDS switchable inductor can ease the
parasitic effects and improve the quality factor, the high
performance dual-band QVCO can be achieved with
remarkable FOM and small chip area. The tuning range can
be widened by adding the switch-capacitor array if
wideband operation is required.
7 Conclusions
Compared with the transformer-based QVCOs which are
operated in dual-band applications, a QVCO using
switchable inductors has relatively low circuit complexity.
A non-merged switchable inductor will consume larger chip
area while a traditional switchable inductor with merged
layout will suffer from substrate loss and proximity effect.
In this paper, a merged switchable inductor with the IDS
layout has been proposed and analysed to understand the
parasitic effects on the quality factor degradation. In
contrast, two switchable inductors with the traditional
layout and IDS layout have been fabricated in a 0.18-m
CMOS process and compared with each other. According
to measurement results, the proposed IDS switchable
inductor indeed improve the quality factor at both the OFF
and ON states.
Two dual-band QVCOs using traditional and IDS
switchable inductors, respectively, have also been fabricated
and veried in a 0.18 m CMOS process. All their device
components of the switchable inductors are of the same.
The dual-band QVCO using the IDS switchable inductor
exhibits lower phase noise and consequently better FOM
owing to better quality factor of the IDS inductor at either
the OFF state or the ON state. Therefore the features of low
complexity, small chip area and better FOM can be
achieved simultaneously in the QVCOs using the proposed
IDS switchable inductors.
8 Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank National Chip
Implementation Center (CIC) for the chip fabrication and
IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2013, Vol. 7, Iss. 6, pp. 368375
doi: 10.1049/iet-cds.2013.0098
www.ietdl.org
measurement. This work is partly supported by National
Science Council (NSC), Taiwan, under the grant NSC
101-2220-E-305-002.
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