A CMOS Phase Noise Filter With Passive Delay Line and PD/CP-Based Frequency Discriminator

• Published in: IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques Vol. 65; no. 11; pp. 4154 - 4164
• Main Authors: Hao, Shilei, Hu, Tongning, Gu, Qun Jane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.11.2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bandwidth; Charge pump (CP); Charge pumps; Clocks; CMOS; dc offset cancellation (DCOC); delay line (DL); Delay lines; delay-locked loop (DLL); Delays; Feature extraction; frequency discriminator (FD); Frequency discriminators; Frequency ranges; Jitter; local oscillator (LO); Noise; Noise levels; Noise sensitivity; phase detector (PD); Phase detectors; Phase locked loops; Phase noise; phase noise cancellation; phase noise filter (PNF); phase-locked loop (PLL); Power consumption; Radio frequency; Sensitivity; Vibration
• ISSN: 0018-9480; 1557-9670
• DOI: 10.1109/TMTT.2017.2704583

A CMOS phase noise filter (PNF) enabled by the passive delay line (DL) and phase detector/charge pump (PD/CP)based frequency discriminator is proposed. The delay-locked loop and dc offset cancellation loop are embedded in the PNF to achieve fully automatic calibration. The PNF is insensitive to the amplitude noise due to the PD/CP phase extraction feature. With a 20-ns DL, the PNF achieves 10.6/15-dB phase noise suppression with -116.6/-114.9-dBc/Hz phase noise sensitivity at 1-MHz offset in low/high-gain mode, respectively. The suppression offset frequency range is 100 kHz-12 MHz with 9.97-10.087-GHz input frequency range. The phase noise sensitivity improves to -119.9/-123.4 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset with the 40/80-ns DL, respectively. The integrated jitter from 10 kHz to 100 MHz is 176/111/85.5 fs with the 20/40/80-ns DL. The PNF is fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process with the chip area of 1.68 mm × 1.5 mm and power consumption of 102 mW. The PNF provides a new approach to further enhance the phase noise and jitter performance especially at low offset frequencies.