A W-band injection-locked frequency divider using GaAs pHEMTs and cascode circuit topology

This study presents a W-band injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) with a wide locking range characteristic by using 0.15 μm GaAs pHEMT techniques. Based on the cascode circuit topology, the oscillation and the injection parts can be designed individually without the trade-off between the input matching and the oscillation condition. Including with a characteristic of the active capacitance in this ILFD, a free-running oscillation frequency about 50 GHz was obtained with a frequency tuning function, in which the tuning range was about 1.2 GHz (50.5-49.3 GHz). By injecting a signal of around 100 GHz into this ILFD, the maximum locking range was measured up to 400 MHz, while the injected power was set to -5 dBm under a 3 V supply with a power consumption of 21 mW in the ILFD core.