Design and Optimization of Double Balanced Gilbert Cell Mixer in 130 nm CMOS Process

Abstract

An improved design procedure for double balanced Gilbert cell mixer is proposed for specific gain and power requirements at various license exempted frequency ranges for a variety of wireless equipment in India. The down conversion mixer design is aimed to carry out in 130 nm CMOS process. At 2.5 mW d.c power, a conversion gain of over 10 dB and a noise figure under 10 dB is intended at minimum overdrives for transconductance and switching stages of the mixer. Several optimization techniques for enhancement of gain, linearity and noise performances of the designed mixer are presented. An improvement in linearity about 10 dBm is targeted for 1-dB gain compression as well as third order intercept points introducing a unique criterion to integrate and exhaustively explore the enhancement techniques while preserving the gain as well as noise performance of the mixer.