LOW-NOISE MONOLITHIC KU-BAND VCO USING PSEUDOMORPHIC HEMT TECHNOLOGY

A low-noise pseudomorphic HEMT Ku-band oscillator with varactor freque ncy tuning and voltage power control is reported. The circuit size, in cluding the varactor and the pads for on-wafer testing, is less than 0 .7 mm(2). On-wafer oscillator measurements show a frequency tuning ban dwidth of 600 MHz centered at similar to 15.2 GHz and an output power up to 17 dBm with more than 15 dB of power control. Phase noise of -87 dBc/Hz at 100 kHz has been obtained, which is an excellent result for a fully monolithic integrated Ku-band voltage-controlled oscillator ( VCO).