A low-power delay stage ring VCO based on wrap-gate CNTFET technology for X-band satellite communication applications

Over the past few years, with lower power consumption, reasonable layout area, and the ease of integration with standard circuit design technologies compared to the other counterparts, delay stage ring voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) have been in the limelight of microelectronics scientists. However, few efforts have focused on representing high-performance delay stage ring VCOs in the deep nanometric regime. In this regard, by virtue of outstanding electrical properties of carbon nanotube wrap-gate transistors, this work aims to propose a carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET)–based delay stage ring VCO. After performing rigorous simulations, the proposed ring VCO which has been designed by 10-nm gate-all-around (GAA) CNTFET technology shows suitable electrical performance metrics. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed GAA-CNTFET-based ring VCO consumes 85.176 μW at (Formula presented.) with a 6.12- to 10.42-GHz frequency tuning range. At the worst-case noise conditions, the proposed design presents -90.747 dBc/Hz phase noise at 1 MHz offset frequency. With occupying 1.414 μm² physical area, the proposed VCO is appropriate for the ultracompact nanoscale radio frequency apparatus. Our simulation results accentuate that with further improvements and commercializing the fabrication techniques for CNTFET transistors, the proposed GAA-CNTFET-based VCO can be considered as a potential candidate for X-band satellite communication applications.