Research On The Key Technologies Of High-performance Injection-locked Frequency Divider

Divider which is generally the highest frequency operating unit in radio frequency integrated circuits plays a decisive role in the system performance. Since injection-locked frequency divider(ILFD) has excellent performance of simple structure, high operating frequency and low power, it has gradually become a hot research. However, the existing injection-locked models are too complicated to guide design and optimization of ILFD circuit effectively. Because there are different requirements for the quality factor of the loop, bandwidth and other parameters, it is difficult to improve locking range, reduce power consumption and design other key performance simultaneously in ILFD circuit design. Besides, temperature and process variations can easily lead to circuit failure.This paper describes the essence of the injection-locked phenomenon and working principle, and summarizes the key design indictors. On the basis of a comprehensive analysis of its theoretical model's evolution, the circuit topologies and the injection-locked behavior, we intend to study the mechanism of interaction between different parameters in ILFD.Finally, by utilizing Chartered 0.18?m 2P5 M RF CMOS process, this paper proposes a low voltage, wide locking range, low complexity, direct divide-by-2 ILFD, including the design, simulations, layout, post-simulation verification, tape out and test preparation. This proposed direct ILFD adopts class-C LC-tank and dual-mixing technique. At an incident power of 0 dBm, the locking range of the divider is 6.4-8.5 GHz without any frequency tuning, the core circuit(without output buffer) only consumes 0.91 mW under a supply voltage of 800 mW.