Extraction Technique of Differential Second Harmonic Output in CMOS LC VCO

A technique to extract differential second harmonic output signals in a CMOS LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is introduced. In a cross-coupled n-type field effect transistor (NFET) and p-channel field effect transistor (PFET) VCO topology, the upper and lower common source nodes of the FET pairs can provide well-balanced differential second harmonic output by resonating the impedances at the common source nodes and operating the VCO in the voltage-limited regime. The idea is verified experimentally by implementing a 5.6-GHz CMOS VCO having a tunable impedance element at the common source node. The error signal power between the differential signals is measured to be -70dBm when properly tuned, which indicates almost perfect differentiality of the second harmonic output signals