Design of a 41.14-48.11 GHz triple frequency based VCO

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Growing deployment of more efficient communication systems serving electric power grids highlights the importance of designing more advanced intelligent electronic devices and communication-enabled measurement units. In this context, phasor measurement units (PMUs) are being widely deployed in power systems. A common block in almost all PMUs is a phase locked oscillator which uses a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). In this paper, a triple frequency based voltage controlled oscillator is presented with low phase noise and robust start-up. The VCO consists of a detector, a comparator, and triple frequency. A VCO starts-up in class AB, then steadies oscillation in class C with low current oscillation. The frequency of the VCO, which is from 13.17 GHz to 16.03 GHz, shows that the frequency is tripling to 41.14-48.11 GHz. Therefore, its application is not limited to PMUs. This work has been simulated in a standard 0.18 µm CMOS process. The simulated VCO achieves a phase noise of -99.47 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset and -121.8 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset from the 48.11 GHz carrier.