Broadband VCOs: System Design Considerations

Summary

In this chapter, the system design considerations for broadband CMOS VCO design are discussed at the system level. The radio and frequency synthesizer architectures must be designed concurrently around the frequency plan for multi-band and multi-standard applications. The design parameters for broadband VCOs are phase noise, tuning range and power consumption as an individual block. CMOS implementation of the broadband VCO also requires attention for on-chip noise isolation and robust design against process variation for single chip radio solutions.