A 24-GHz Single-Transistor Oscillator on Paper

This letter describes a single-transistor oscillator implemented on a paper substrate at the operating frequency of 24 GHz, based on a design procedure that makes it possible to overcome the limitations caused by thin high-loss substrates and package parasitics of commercial components. The commercial transistor adopted in the oscillator is led to instability by exploiting its parasitic gate inductance. The drain network compensates for the parasitic inductance of the transistor package and connects the oscillator circuit to a 50-Ohm load resistance. Finally, an external inductor at the source terminal is used to resonate out the capacitive contribution of the circuit at the oscillation frequency. Overall, the active device appears in a quasi-common-drain stage. Experimental results on prototype show that the oscillator exhibits an output power of +6.2 dBm at 24 GHz, with a dc power consumption of 72.5 mW.