Linear analysis of phase noise in LC oscillators in deep submicron CMOS technologies

This paper investigates the phase noise in LC oscillators with NMOS cross-coupled pair by means of a linear analysis. The latter includes the impact of noise sources that are often neglected, such as gate leakage shot noise, induced gate noise and all terminal access resistances noise. Despite not considering up-conversion of flicker noise, this linear analysis still provides reliable and useful results, demonstrated by means of a detailed comparison between the analytical description and simulations results from a 40nm and a 28nm CMOS technology.