Title: Design of optimal nano-CMOS differential VCO for RF applications

Authors: Prakash Kumar Rout; Debiprasad Pryabrata Acharya; Ganapati Panda

Addresses: Department of Applied Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, Silicon Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar-751024, Odisha, India ' Department Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela-769008, Odisha, India ' School of Electrical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar-751013, Odisha, India

Abstract: In the design of radio frequency (RF) circuits fast prototyping with optimal performance is a challenging task for designers. The noise consideration in the differential voltage controlled oscillator (DVCO) is very much vital in its design. The present work focuses on the design of low phase noise and low power robust nano-CMOS differential voltage controlled oscillator (DVCO) for a desired frequency of oscillation 2.4 GHz. Constrained multi-objective optimisation, infeasibility driven evolutionary algorithm (IDEA) is used to minimise the phase noise and power consumption simultaneously. In this work, the phase noise is formulated to inherently account for the flicker noise along with the thermal noise and optimised along with power consumption by IDEA. The optimal performing circuit is synthesised using GPDK-90 nm 1P9M process library. The frequency of oscillation obtained in the parasitic inclusive design of the differential VCO is 2.399513658 GHz which is in good agreement with the target frequency with negligible deviation and the corresponding optimum values of power consumption and phase noise recorded are 845.5095 µW and 79.67 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, respectively.

Keywords: CMOS analogue integrated circuits; differential VCO; voltage controlled oscillator; DVCO; phase noise; power consumption; radio frequency applications; nano-CMOS; RF circuit design; constrained optimisation; multi-objective optimisation; evolutionary algorithm.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAD.2014.068297

International Journal of Circuits and Architecture Design, 2014 Vol.1 No.3, pp.242 - 257

Received: 02 Dec 2013
Accepted: 31 Mar 2014
Published online: 08 Apr 2015 *

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