Abstract: A low-phase-noise Σ-Δ fractional-N frequency synthesizer for GSM/PCS/DCS/WCDMA transceivers is presented. The voltage controlled oscillator is designed with a modified digital controlled capacitor array to extend the tuning range and minimize phase noise. A high-resolution adaptive frequency calibration technique is introduced to automatically choose frequency bands and increase phase-noise immunity. A prototype is implemented in 0.13 μm CMOS technology. The experimental results show that the designed 1.2 V wideband frequency synthesizer is locked from 3.05 to 5.17 GHz within 30 μs, which covers all five required frequency bands. The measured in-band phase noise are -89, -95.5 and -101 dBc/Hz for 3.8 GHz, 2 GHz and 948 MHz carriers, respectively, and accordingly the out-of-band phase noise are -121, -123 and -132 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, which meet the phase-noise-mask requirements of the above-mentioned standards.

Key words: phase-locked loop