Fully integrated low phase-noise VCOs with on-chip MEMS inductors

Eun-Chul Park, Yun-Seok Choi, Jun-Bo Yoon, Songcheol Hong, E. Yoon
2003 IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques  
We present fully integrated high-performance voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) with on-chip microelectromechanical system (MEMS) inductors for the first time. MEMS inductors have been realized from the unique CMOS-compatible MEMS process that we have developed to provide suspended thick metal structures for high-quality ( ) factors. Fully integrated CMOS VCOs have been fabricated by monolithically integrating these MEMS inductors on the top of the CMOS active circuits realized by the TSMC
more » ... 18m mixed-mode CMOS process. Low phase noise has been achieved as 124 and 117 dBc/Hz at 300-kHz offset from carrier frequencies of 1 and 2.6 GHz, respectively, in the fabricated single-chip VCOs.
doi:10.1109/tmtt.2002.806510 fatcat:4ic7gjjkujantlah6kwdf4lzy4