A Single-Balanced Quadruple Subharmonical Mixer With a Compact if Extraction

Abstract

A novel 21-35 GHz single-balanced quadruple subharmonic monolithic passive mixer is fabricated using the 0.15 µm GaAs pHEMT process. This mixer consists of a local oscillation (LO) spiral balun and a radio frequency (RF) band pass filter which has an intermediate frequency (IF) extracted feature utilizing a pair of anti-parallel Schottky barrier diode to achieve quadruple subharmonic mixing mechanism. The RF band pass filter formed with an interdigital coupler and a low-pass network is used to reduce the chip dimension while operating at a low frequency band and to improve the isolation between the RF and IF ports with a broadband operation. From the measured results, the mixer exhibits 11.3-15.1 dB conversion loss, 28.8 dB-high RF-to-IF isolation, 40 dB-high LO-to-RF isolation, 60 dB-high 3LOto-RF isolation over a 21-35 GHz RF bandwidth, and an input 1 dB compression power of 4 dBm. The compact IF extraction circuit supports an IF frequency ranging from DC to 3.1 GHz. The core chip size is only 0.67 × 0.75 mm 2 .

A 38 to 44 GHZ Sub-Harmonic Balanced HBT Mixer With Integrated Miniature Spiral Type Marchand Balun

“…The balun consists of two offset broadside coupled spiral transformers. Contrary to most other reported miniature spiral type Marchand balun designs, e.g., [11][12][13][14][15][16][17], our design adds five shunt capacitors externally to the spiral transformer structures. The lumped element equivalent circuit model of the spiral type Marchand balun configured as a symmetrical four port network is shown in Fig.…”

Millimeter Wave Subharmonic Mixer Implementation Using Graphene Film Coating

“…Another advantage is that the wide frequency gap between the RF and LO signals simplifies the LO and RF separation. Frequency mixer circuits, either in microstrip [11][12][13] or in monolithic technology [14][15][16][17][18], generally use transistors [19][20][21][22][23][24], or diodes [25][26][27][28], in order to generate the desired nonlinear behavior.…”

New Non-Linear Approach for the Evaluation of the Linearity of High Gain Harmonic Self Oscillating Mixers

“…As in any amplifier [8][9][10], mixer [11][12][13][14][15][16][17], or active antenna with mixing capabilities [18], noise behavior [11,12] and IF signal distortion [13,18] are key factors that must be rigorously analyzed and minimized. In this work, it will be shown that the figures of merit which are traditionally used to analyze the linearity of conventional mixers cannot be directly applied to an autonomous circuit like the HSOM, because of the influence of the input RF signal power on the parameters of the self-oscillating signal.…”