A 28-GHz CMOS Down-conversion Mixer with Low-magnetic-coupled Source Degeneration Inductors for 5G Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a 28-GHz CMOS millimeter-wave down-conversion mixer employing a derivative superposition linearization technique with our proposed low-coupling source degeneration inductors for 5G cellular communication systems to improve the linearity performance of the downconversion mixer. The proposed low-magneticcoupled source degeneration inductors avoid the linearity degradation gap between the schematic design without considering magnetic coupling and the post-layout design with considering magnetic coupling effect due to the source degeneration inductors. The down-conversion mixer with local oscillator buffer is implemented using a 65-nm CMOS technology, and it draws a 21 mA from a 1-V supply voltage. It achieves a gain of 10.1 dB, noise figure below 10 dB, and third-order output intercept point of 19.3 dBm from 26.5 to 29.5 GHz.