SYNOPSIS

For M.Tech (Electronics) IV Semester Project in

Board of Electronics Engineering & Technology.

Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur University, Nagpur.

On

DESIGNING OF HIGH
PERFORMANCE VCO TO REDUCE
START UP TIME OF RF
TRANSMITTER

Submitted By:

Miss.Mrunalini A.Nandanwar

Under the Guidance of

Prof.D.R.Dandekar
Associate Professor, Department of Electronics Engineering,

B.D.College of Engineering, Sevagram, Wardha.

September 2011
1. Introduction:
1.1 RF Transmitter:

The RF transmission can be defined as the emission of a carrier modulated by

the information signal through an antenna. This apparently simple definition includes the three
basic functions that every transmitter has to provide: modulation, upconversion and power
amplification. The baseband information bearing the information has in fact to be transferred at
the RF frequency specified for a given application, where it will be embedded in the carrier
signal.

Basic RF parameters:

Following basic RF parameters are required for various targeting applications:

 Time/frequency references : for proper channel selection
 Turn on time: short turn on time to reduce power consumption
 Data rate: high data rate allows low duty cycle
 Transmitter output power: sufficient output power to enable the connectivity between
different WBAN
 Transmitter efficiency: to improve performance.

1.2 Wireless communication:

Recent growth in the wireless communication area has lead to the rising need of
RF circuits that are low power, low noise and embedded system on chip (SOC). As the wireless
telecommunication technology becomes more and more advanced, transceiver and receiver
system blocks are becoming more and more complicated to design for SOC.All blocks of front
end except power amplifier, the frequency synthesizer usually consumes most power.

Figure :1 Wireless Communication analog /RF aspect

 The power consumption of the transceiver does not vary much with the data rate .
Therefore, it makes sense to send the packets in burst at high data rate to minimize the
transmission time and shut off the transmitter during the idle period. Unfortunately, transmitters
require a significant overhead in terms of time and energy dissipation to go from the sleep state
to the active state. Typical start-up time is on the order of 100µs or more, while the transmit on-
time is less than that. This means that the transient energy during the startup can be higher than
the energy required by the electronics during the actual transmission. The effect of start-up
transient is shown in Figure 2,

Figure 2: Effect of start-up transient

The solid line shows that as the start-up time increases, the energy consumption is
dominated by the start-up transient and not by the transmit on-time. Hence it is essential to
minimize the start-up time in order to reduce power consumption. The energy consumption is
depended on the power dissipation of the transmitter. This power dissipation of the transmitter
can be lowered by reducing the performance requirements of critical transmitter components -
for example, the phase noise requirement of the VCO and the frequency offset error of the
frequency synthesizer.

1.3 CMOS LC-VCO:

Among of the RF blocks, the CMOS LC-VCO is one of the most difficult circuit to
integrate for the following reasons: 1) poor quality factor of the monolithic inductor; 2) limited
tuning range of the varactor and 3) poor flicker noise in CMOS Technology. RF designers try to
design low phase noise oscillators, while their design complexities carry various challenges. Low
phase noise is one of the most important criteria in a VCO while is in conflict with power
consumption.
So, achieving the low phase noise and simultaneously low power VCO is an open
challenge. Many studies are reported considering phase noise mechanisms and many papers
explain about how one can design an oscillator with low phase noise by selecting the appropriate
topology, resonator and coupling networks.
1.4 Basic Resonance Circuit:
One of the most important parts of an LC VCO is the LC resonant tank. The resonant
tank is the basic configuration to control the oscillation frequency of an LC oscillator. The basic
tank configuration of an LC oscillator is as seen in Fig. 3. From Fig. 3, L represents the
inductance of the tank while C represents the capacitance. Both RL and RC are the parasitic of
the inductance and capacitance respectively.

Figure 3. Basic LC resonant tank

In order for the resonance tank to resonate without any loss coming from parasitic, the
parasitic resistance and capacitance coming from both the inductor and resistor need to be
compensated. As for the compensation for parasitic resistance, a negative resistance, -R is
formed in the tank in order to cancel out both of the parasitic resistances. However, in a real
form, negative resistance does not exist. a negative resistance is formed by cross-coupling
transistors that are connected to the resonant tank.

Figure 4: Cross-Coupled Differential Oscillator

By cross-connecting the output to the input of the oscillator, negative resistance that has
the same conductance as the transistor’s tranconductance (gm) is created.
2. Literature Review:

1] Hyun seok Choi,”A LOW-POWER CMOS VCO FOR 2.4 GHz WLAN”, IEEE 2007:

In this work, by using 0.18-um CMOS process, with simple modification

of the core transistors of differential LC-VCO and a decoupling capacitor, a differential
cross coupled VCO is developed while obtaining both performances of the low power
and low phase noise.

Figure 5: differential cross coupled VCO

----------- (1)

From Equation (1), Gn (negative conductance) is formed as a

combination of ｇ mn (transconductance of NMOS) and ｇ mp (transconductance of
PMOS) and source resistor Rs. Rs not only maintains the balanced DC conditions but
also makes this VCO have the small-signal schematic like the conventional LC-VCO by
proper selection of N- and P MOSFETs. The resistor Rs controls the DC current as well
as the peak dynamic current of the VCO. Flicker noise in M1 and M2 is modeled as a
fluctuating offset voltage that unbalances the differential pair. Balance will be restored by
decoupling the sources of M1 and M2 with a capacitor Cc. The P-MOSFET used in the
cross-connected pair helps to reduce phase noise due to less flicker noise. This designed
mainly used to consume power less than 1 mW .It also provides best FOM.

2] Yuemei Li,”2.4 GHz VCO DESIGN AND TAIL CURRENT ANALYSIS”, IEEE 2007:

In this work ‘Complementary cross coupled VCO ‘architecture is used. In

this two prototypes are designed: one uses PMOS current mirror, other uses NMOS current
mirror.
 Figure 6: Topologies of VCO

Here comparison is made between the two current mirror used in each topology
and conclusion is reached on how the tail current affects the whole performance of VCO. In
analysis of phase noise and VCO gain factor it is seen that PMOS current mirror has better
performance than NMOS does.PMOS current bias gets lower phase noise and with no more
power consumption. This is used to compensate active power loss in LC Tank, also it provide
high tuning range.

3] Mohammad Niaboli-Guilani,”A LOW POWER LOW PHASE NOISE CMOS VOLTAGE

CONTROLLED OSCILLATOR”, IEEE 2010:

In this paper a fully differential topology based VCO is presented that uses the
technique of added negative transconductance in order to increase the quality factor of the
LC tank, improve the phase noise of the VCO. Used the common mode double pseudo
resistance technique to achieve low power consumption without decrease the phase noise.
This is used to consume low current, also it provide best FOM.

Figure 7:Cross coupled VCO with Pseudo Resistance

 4] Cheol-Hoe Kim, “A Low Phase Noise and Low Power Series Coupled Quadrature
VCO Using Reconfigurable LC Tank “, IEEE 2008:

In this paper dual band Quadrature VCO with Reconfigurable LC tank is

designed. In this case used series coupled QVCO instead of parallel coupled QVCO because
the size of coupling transistors can be increased to acquire better phase accuracy without
increasing much current consumption. Current source is excluded to reduce flicker noise
from current source. To obtain phase noise performance the filter inductors Lf are connected
at the common source node.

Figure 8:Quadrature VCO with reconfigurable LC tank

It is used in a multi standard and multi band transceiver; also it is used for lower
current consumption.

3. Problem Definition:
The main objective of this project is to design high performance LC tank VCO to
reduce start up time of RF transmitter to conserve energy .The proposed design will be
target:

 Technology:0.18µm
 Oscillation frequency : 2.4 GHz
 low power consumption
 low phase noise
 Best FOM
 Implementation: This can be done by using ADS Tool
 Verification and Testing: Independent testing of proposed module will be performed.
 4. Proposed Methodology:
1] Study of design and simulation environment

2] Design basic circuit of LC tank VCO by using following Architectures:

i] Differential Cross coupled LC Tank VCO

ii] Complementary cross coupled LC tank VCO
iii] Cross coupled LC tank VCO with pseudo resistance
iv] Quadrature VCO with Reconfigurable LC tank

3] Simulation, verification and comparison of results.

4] Critical comparison and analysis of parameters.

5] Modification for improvement of selected Architecture.

6] Verification and comparison of result.

5. Work Plan:
 Detail Study Of References : 1 month
 Study of Tool : 15 days
 Designing of circuit : 1 month
 Simulation and testing :1 month
 Result Verification :15 days
 Layout Designing :1 month
 Thesis Writing : 1 month

6. Implication:
Proposed design will offer low power consumption and low phase noise of LC tank
VCO by using proposed Methodology in order to reduce start up time of RF Transmitter
to conserve energy.

7. References:
1] Yuemei Li Zheying Li Bo Li Chunlei Wang,” 2.4GHz VCO Design and Tail Current Analysis:
IEEE 2007

2] Cheol-Hoe Kim, Soo-Hwan Shin, and Hyung-Joun Yoo” A Low Phase Noise and Low Power
Series Coupled Quadrature VCO Using Reconfigurable LC Tank” IEEE 2007
3] Matteo Contaldo,” A 2.4-GHz BAW-Based Transceiver for Wireless Body Area Networks”I
EEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS”, VOL. 4, NO. 6,
DECEMBER 2010

4] Mohammad Niaboli-Guilani” A Low Power Low Phase Noise CMOS Voltage Controlled
Oscillator”IEEE2010

5]Hyun Seok Choi,” A LOW-POWER CMOS VCO FOR 2.4GHZ WLAN”IEEE 2007

6] Bo Zhao,” An Ultra-Low-Supply Dual-Band VCO for Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE 2009

7] Benton H. Calhoun,” Design Considerations for Ultra-Low Energy Wireless Microsensor

Nodes”, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER, VOL. 54, NO. 6, JUNE 2005

8] Hannes Reinisch “An Electro-Magnetic Energy Harvesting SystemWith 190 nW Idle Mode
Power Consumption for a BAW Based Wireless Sensor Node”, IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-
STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 46, NO. 7, JULY 2011

9] Y.K. Tan,” Energy Harvesting using Piezoelectric Igniter for Self-Powered Radio Frequency
(1F) Wireless Sensors”, 2006 IEEE

10] Y. H. Chee,” A 46% Efficient 0.8dBm Transmitter for Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE
2006 Symposium on VLSI Circuits Digest of Technical Papers.

11]”Design of Analog CMOS Integrated Circuits”by Behzad Razavi.

12] Andrew Y.Wang,”Energy Efficient Modulation and MAC for Asymmetric RF Microsensor
Systems”, ISLPED’01 August6-7, 2001.

13] K.bult, A.Burstein,”Low Power Systems for Wireless Microsensors”, ISLPED

1996Monterey CA USA.

Submitted By: Supervised By:

Miss.Mrunalini A.Nandanwar Prof.D.R.Dandekar

(Guide)

Prof.M.A.Gaikwad
(Co-Guide)