Impact of low-frequency substrate disturbances on a 4.5 GHz VCO

This paper presents the impact of low-frequency substrate disturbances on a fully integrated voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) spectrum. A 4.5 GHz VCO test-chip is presented; two substrate taps are placed inside the VCO core to measure or to inject disturbances into the substrate. The VCO carrier frequency sensitivity function of the tuning voltage and the bias current are measured. Then, the VCO spurious side-bands caused by harmonic substrate noise disturbances are analyzed to find a relation between the substrate noise characteristics and spur magnitudes. Theoretically the impulse sensitivity function (ISF) approach is used to analyze device sensitivity to substrate noise. Finally, a significant link between device sensitivity functions, low-frequency substrate disturbances and the VCO side-band spectral power, is demonstrated. According to this study, we conclude that a global approach which only considers power supply bounces in mixed IC's is not sufficient to analyze the sensitivity of RF integrated oscillators to low frequency substrate noise.