ABSTRACT
Recently, with the increasing demand for high-data-rate communication system such as 60GHz band applications, the requirements for integrating PLLs with an on-chip transceiver becomes more challenging. The conventional methodology to achieve fully coverage of the IEEE 802.15.3c 60GHz band (58.3-64.8GHz) by using multiple capacitor bands seems to be a good candidate. However, the quality factor of the tuning capacitor implemented by MOSFET varactors is low at such high frequency, leading to lower drivability of the VCO which in turn may make the VCO fail to lock the prescaler. Instead of using capacitive tuning in the VCO, in this chapter, a novel 60GHz VCO using inductive tuning by switching return path is employed to cover the whole band with high output power almost unaffected. The PLL provides the four source frequencies defined by the IEEE 802.15.3c 60GHz communication standard with the attained phase noise suitable for various short-range applications.
