Active Inductor with Feedback Resistor Based Voltage Controlled Oscillator Design for Wireless Applications

This paper presents active inductor based VCO design for wireless applications based on analysis of active inductor models (Weng-Kuo Cascode active inductor & Liang Regular Cascode active inductor) with feedback resistor technique. Embedment of feedback resistor results in the increment of inductance as well as the quality factor whereas the values are 125.6@2.4GHz (Liang) and 98.7@3.4GHz (Weng- Kuo). The Weng-Kuo active inductor based VCO shows a tuning frequency of 1.765GHz ~2.430GHz (31.7%), while consuming a power of 2.60 mW and phase noise of -84.15 dBc/Hz@1MHz offset. On the other hand, Liang active inductor based VCO shows a frequency range of 1.897GHz ~2.522GHz (28.28%), while consuming a power of 1.40 mW and phase noise of -80.79 dBc/Hz@1MHz offset. Comparing Figure-of-Merit (FoM), power consumption, output power and stability in performance, designed active inductor based VCOs outperform with the state-of-the-art