This thesis proposes a novel low distortion, on-chip sine-wave generator. A low distortion input is required in many test and measurement setups for analog and mixed-signal systems, where the input signal should have less distortion than that contributed by the device under test (DUT). For conventional oscillators, there is a compromise between output quality and circuit complexity, as high-order filter is required to achieve high selectivity.

In recent years, harmonic cancellation (HC) based sine-wave generators become more attractive as it can generate low distortion signal at low hardware cost. Unfortunately, most HC based sine-wave generators suffer from mismatch and process variations, which limit the achieved spectral purity.

This work aims to develop a generator which is insensitive to these limiting factors. A two-stage HC based approach is proposed. It can achieve low distortion signal generation while keeping the simplicity of the whole system. The project involves the design and test of a prototype chip. The measurement results are provided to verify the feasibility of the proposed generator.