• high frequency
• 28nm
• oscillator
• vco
• aerospace
• radiation

High speed serial data communication links are required in most of today’s high-demanding systems. Communication speeds from 5 up to 40 Gb/s are reported recently with speeds increasing each year. These circuits, such as each electronic complex system, need precise and reliable synchronization circuits to work properly.

One of the main blocks of this synchronization circuits is surely the Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO), which generates an output signal at a certain frequency, that can be controlled by a voltage input.

Moreover, in radiation affected environments, such as avionics, space and high energy physics, high speed communication links are essential too. Electronic devices used in this field of application must be tolerant to radiation in order to work properly.

In this perspective, the main goals of this thesis are to study the implications of using the widely used VCO architectures in radiation environments and to design a high frequency VCO in order to develop a PLL system for a slice of the market not yet explored as space.

Ultra-scaled technologies, such as 28nm used in this thesis, could offer many advantages if used to design high frequency RF SoC, such as high operation frequencies and high integration capability.

In conclusion, the purpose of this thesis is to design a high frequency integrated VCO in 28nm TSMC process, working at a central frequency of 25GHz and to test its reliability in a radiation environment, trying to make it efficient in this respect using some radiation hardened by design techniques (RHBD) where possible. A comparison between various type of oscillators is also done, in order to find the architecture with the best global performances and that is the most suitable for radiation environment.