A 2.9 GHz Variable Inductor-Based DCO With 1.3 kHz Frequency Resolution for FMCW Radar Applications

A high-resolution digitally controlled oscillator (DCO) for frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar applications is presented in this brief. The proposed DCO utilizes a variable inductor and linearization correction technique, and cooperates with the multi-stage frequency multipliers to achieve frequency sources at 2.9, 5.8, and 11.6 GHz simultaneously on a single chip. The demonstration of the proposed DCO and frequency multipliers was fabricated in 1P10M 40-nm CMOS technology. Measurement results show that the frequency resolution of the DCO achieves 0.73 to 1.3 kHz over a frequency range of 16.8%, from 2.5 to 2.96 GHz. The phase noise at 1-MHz frequency offset is −127.3 dBc/Hz with 15-mW power consumption. The chip occupies 0.73 mm 2 , while the proposed DCO occupies a core area of 0.31 mm 2 .