"Low-Voltage Transformer-Based CMOS VCOs and Frequency Dividers"

- Howard Luong, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Integrated transformer has been intensively used in designing low-voltage CMOS voltage-controlled oscillators and frequency dividers with high performance in terms of high frequency, low power, low phase noise, and good figure of merits. This tutorial will first introduce transformer-based circuit techniques and then present several designs with state-of-the-art measured performance as case studies. The key advantages as well as limitations of the techniques will be summarized, and the remaining challenges together with the future trends will be discussed.