Mode-Switching Left-Handed Standing Wave Voltage-Controlled Oscillator

ABSTRACT This article proposes a mode‐switching dual‐band CMOS standing‐wave oscillator (SWO) implemented with a distributed left‐handed (LH) LC network and CMOS mode switches. The SWO consists of four units of LH LC resonator stacked in series, and the LC resonator is in shunt with a pair of cross‐coupled transistors to compensate the loss of LC resonator. A pair of MOSFET mode‐switches is used to switch on/off the frequency bands. In the fundamental mode, the SWO operates at the high‐frequency band. In harmonic mode, the oscillator provides low‐frequency band outputs. The dual‐band function exploits the multiple oscillation mode of the LH SWO. The proposed SWO has been implemented with the TSMC 0.18 μm 1P6M CMOS technology. It can generate differential signals in the high‐band frequency range of 7.18–7.55 GHz and in the low‐band frequency range of 4.5–4.64 GHz. The die area of the SWO is 0.991 × 0.815 mm2. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:2074–2077, 2013