A 5-GHz Band Low-Phase Noise CMOS VCO Using Above-IC Technologies

ABSTRACT This article presents a 5‐GHz band low phase noise CMOS voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) based on a high quality factor above‐IC inductor that is stacked on the top of a 0.18‐μm RF CMOS process using wafer level package technology. The measured phase noise of the VCO is −119.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency, which is an improvement of 6 dB compared to a conventional VCO with on‐chip CMOS inductor. The design challenge of the grounding of the above‐IC inductor stacked on the CMOS structure is investigated in this work. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:2051–2055, 2013