A High-Speed Programmable Frequency Divider for a Ka-Band Phase Locked Loop-Type Frequency Synthesizer in 90-nm CMOS

A high-speed programmable frequency divider for a Ka-band phase-locked loop (PLL)-type frequency synthesizer system is presented and fabricated in 90 nm CMOS technology. It consists mainly of a divided-by-8/9 dual-modulus prescaler (DMP) and pulse swallow counters. An active-inductor-based source-coupled logic (SCL) D flip-flop (DFF) and the “OR” gate are used in the DMP in order to promote its locking range and operation frequency. The measured operation frequency range of the improved programmable frequency divider covers from 6 to 20 GHz with a low phase noise of less than −136 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset of output signals, an optimum sensitivity of −27 dBm at 15 GHz, and a low power consumption of 9.1 mW.