Design and analysis of a low phase noise, wide tunable CMOS based low power VCO with active inductor

A novel active-inductor based VCO design, employing a 180 nm TSMC technology, is postulated in this work. The coarse frequency is obtained in this VCO system by regulating the MOS-based active inductor. This design provides a high oscillation frequency of 3.7 GHz and a tuning range of 99.25% when the voltage ranges from 1 to 2 V. The total power consumed by this active-inductor based VCO varies from 0.7 mW to 33.32 mW within the specified range. The achieved phase noise is − 107 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency. The figure of merit measured is − 162.15 dBc/Hz. The results demonstrate that the proposed VCO functions more effectively than the existing VCOs.