Low power up-conversion mixer with gain control function

Abstract

This work develops a low-power up-conversion mixer. The developed mixer integrates the LC parallel resonant technique, the inverter amplifier technique, the resistive-feedback technique, and the resistive source degeneration technique. Therefore, it has higher conversion gain, low power consumption, a large IF bandwidth, and gain control functionality, which provides favorable linearity. The output radio frequency of the proposed mixer is between 1950MHz and 2000MHz, and the input frequencies are 50MHz to 100MHz. The measured conversion gains of the mixer in high-gain mode and low-gain mode are 9.5dB and 1dB, respectively; the measured input third-order intercept points (IIP3) in high-gain and low-gain modes are 0dBm and 7dBm, respectively. The DC operation point of the proposed mixer does not differ between the modes. The mixer dissipates 2mW of power at a supply voltage of 1.2V, and is used in a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 90nm RF CMOS process. The area of the chip is 0.7mm2.