A 2.4 GHz LC-VCO Fractional-N Phase Locked Loop Open-Source Design in 130-nm BiCMOS

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF) integrated circuit design using the open-source complementary Metal-Oxide semiconductor (CMOS) ecosystem, such as for phase-locked loops (PLLs), is limited by the absence of reliable passive device models, particularly on-chip spiral inductors. Consequently, prior work relies on ring-oscillator-based voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) with degraded phase noise performance. This work presents a 2.4 GHz type-II fractional-N PLL implemented in the IHP SG13G2 130 nm BiCMOS open-source technology. The proposed design employs a cross-coupled differential LC-VCO integrated with a custom-designed spiral inductor, developed using an open-source electromagnetic modelling workflow in OpenEMS. The optimized inductor achieves 4 nH inductance with a quality factor of 16.8 at 2.45 GHz. The LC-VCO sensitivity is approximately 120 MHz/V, while the PLL phase noise is -100.8 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The complete PLL is realized using a fully open-source electronic design automation (EDA) flow, occupying a total area of 930 um x 666 um (~0.619 mm2) and consuming 12.73 mW, demonstrating the feasibility of RF integrated circuit design in an open-source CMOS IC design ecosystem.