A quadrature RC-oscillator with capacitive coupling

• We investigated the capacitive coupling in RC oscillators.
• Capacitive coupling is noiseless and requires a small area.
• Capacitive coupling does not increase the power dissipation.
• Phase error below 1 degree and amplitude mismatch lower than 1% are obtained.
• A FoM of −154.8 dBc/Hz (comparable to the state-of-the-art RC oscillators).

In this paper the capacitive coupling in quadrature RC-oscillators is investigated. The capacitive coupling has the advantages of being noiseless with a small area penalty and without increasing the power dissipation. The results show that a phase error below 1° and an amplitude mismatch lower than 1% are obtained with a coupling capacitance about 20% of the oscillator׳s capacitance value. Due to this kind of coupling, the phase-noise improves by 3 dB (to −115.1 dBc/Hz @ 10 MHz) and the increase of power requirement is only marginal leading to a figure-of-merit of −154.8 dBc/Hz. This is comparable to the best state-of-the-art RC-oscillators, yet the dissipated power is about four times less. We present calculations of frequency, phase error and amplitude mismatch that are validated by simulations. The theory shows that phase error is proportional to the amplitude mismatch, indicating that an automatic phase error minimization based on the amplitude mismatches is possible. The measurements on a 2.4 GHz voltage-controlled quadrature RC-oscillator with capacitive coupling fabricated in 130 nm CMOS circuit prototypes validate the theory.