An optimized low-power voltage controlled oscillator

This paper presents an optimised low-power low-phase-noise Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) for Bluetooth wireless applications. The system level design issues and tradeoffs related to Direct Conversion Receiver (DCR) and Low Intermediate Frequency (IF) architecture for Bluetooth are discussed. Subsequently, for a low IF architecture, the critical VCO performance parameters are derived from system specifications. The VCO presented in the paper is optimised by implementing a novel biasing circuit that employs two current mirrors, one at the top and the other one at the bottom of the cross-coupled complementary VCO, to give the exact replica of the current in both the arms of current mirror circuit. This approach, therefore, significantly reduces the system power consumption as well as improves the system performance. Results show that, the VCO consumes only 281μW of power at 2V supply. Its phase noise performance are -115dBc/Hz, -130dBc/Hz and -141dBc/Hz at the offset frequency of 1MHz, 3MHz and 5MHz respectively. Results indicate that 31% reduction in power consumption is achieved as compared to the traditional VCO design. These characteristics make the designed VCO a better candidate for Bluetooth wireless application where power consumption is the major issue.