Single Balanced Mixer Research Articles

Design of a 94-GHz Single Balanced Mixer Using Planar Schottky Diodes with a Nano-Dot Structure on a GaAs Substrate

In this paper, we develop a 94-㎓ single balanced mixer with low conversion loss using planar Schottky diodes on a GaAs substrate. The GaAs Schottky diode has a nanoscale anode with a T-shaped disk that can yield high cutoff frequency characteristics. The fabricated Schottky diode with an anode diameter of 500 ㎚ has a series resistance of 21 Ω, an ideality factor of 1.32, a junction capacitance of 8.03 fF, and a cutoff frequency of 944 GHz. Based on this technology, a 94-㎓ single balanced mixer was constructed. The fabricated mixer shows an average conversion loss of -7.58 ㏈ at an RF frequency of 92.5 ㎓ to 95 ㎓ and an IF frequency of 500 ㎒ with an LO power of 7 ㏈m. The RF-to-LO isolation characteristics were greater than -32 ㏈. These values are considered to be attributed to superior Schottky diode characteristics.

60 GHz Front-End Components for Broadband Wireless Communication in 130 nm CMOS Technology

Abstract The over 5 GHz available spectral space allocated worldwide around the 60 GHz band, is very promising for very high data rate wireless short-range communications. In this article we present two key components for the 60 GHz front-end of a transceiver, in 130 nm RF CMOS technology: a single-balanced mixer with high Conversion Gain (CG), reduced Noise Figure (NF) and low power consumption, and an LC cross-coupled Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) with very good linearity, with respect to Vctrl, and very low Phase Noise (PN). In both circuits, custom designed inductors and a balun structure for the mixer are employed, in order to enhance their performance. The VCO’s inductor achieves an inductance of 198 pH and a quality factor (Q) of 30, at 30 GHz. The balun shows less than 1 o Phase Imbalance (PI) and less than 0.2 dB Amplitude Imbalance (AI), from 57 to 66 GHz. The mixer shows a CG greater than 15 dB and a NF lower than 12 dB. In addition, the VCO achieves a Phase Noise lower than -106 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset, and shows great linearity for the entire band. Both circuits are biased with a 1.2 V supply voltage and the total power consumption is about 10.6 mW for the mixer and 10.92 mW for the VCO.

Single Balanced Mixer Using Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) 90° Coupler

Single Balanced Mixer Using Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) 90° Coupler

Single Balanced Mixer Using Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) 90° Coupler

Single Balanced Mixer Using Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) 90° Coupler

A 370 $\mu{\rm W}$ CMOS MedRadio Receiver Front-End With Inverter-Based Complementary Switching Mixer

A low-power CMOS RF receiver front-end is proposed for medical device radiocommunications service (MedRadio) applications. The proposed MedRadio receiver front-end design incorporates an AC-coupled current reuse inverter in order to reduce power consumption and increase transconductance gm. The proposed RF front-end comprises a current-reuse low noise amplifier with ac coupling inverter topology and an inverter-based single-balanced mixer with complementary switching. The proposed RF front-end is implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS process and draws 370 μA from a 1 V supply voltage. It shows a gain of more than 29 dB, NF of less than 5.2 dB, and IIP3 of more than -19.5 dBm for all MedRadio bands.

A W-band broadband single balanced mixer using an improved 180-degree hybrid

In this paper, an improved wideband millimeter-wave 180 ◦ hybrid is proposed and a novel W-band broadband single balanced mixer based on the new hybrid is presented. The proposed hybrid consists of a standard waveguide to suspended coplanar waveguide (SCPW) transition and a SCPW to suspended stripline transition. According to the inherent electromag- netic field characteristics of the two transitions, the proposed hybrid achieves good performances of broadband phase, power distribution and isolation. The simulated insertion losses of the two transitions and the isolation between the two signal input ports are better than 0.1 dB and 54 dB respectively. A single balanced mixer based on the proposed hybrid has been designed and fabricated at W-band. The measured single-sideband (SSB) conversion loss is less than 9.5 dB for the radio frequency (RF) range from 80 to 108 GHz. And the best SSB conversion loss of 5.8 dB is achieved with RF of 104 GHz. Moreover, the local oscillator (LO)-RF isolation is more than 30 dB over the overall W-band. The results show that the fabricated mixer has the advantages of broad bandwidth, low conversion loss, and good isolation.

AN IMPROVED WIDEBAND 180-DEGREE HYBRID APPLIED TO BALANCED MIXER

In this paper, an improved wideband millimeter-wave 180 ◦ hybrid is proposed to apply to balanced mixers and multipliers. The proposed hybrid consists of a transition of standard waveguide to suspended coplanar waveguide (SCPW) and a transition of SCPW to suspended stripline. According to the inherent electromagnetic field characteristics of the two transitions, the proposed hybrid has merits of broadband power distribution and high isolation, which does not rely on resonant circuits. The measured insertion losses and isolation of two transitions at Ka-band are typically 1.4 dB and 25 dB, respectively. To verify the application of the proposed hybrid, A W-band single balanced mixer based on the hybrid has been designed and fabricated. The measured single-sideband (SSB) conversion losses of the fabricated mixer are less than 9.5 dB for the radio frequency (RF) range from 80 to 108 GHz. The presented hybrid has been proven to be efficient for the design of millimeter-wave balanced mixers and could be well applied in multipliers and other integrated circuits.

A Compact SIW Mixer For Millimeter-Wave Applications

The present paper highlights an innovative broadband millimeter-wave single balanced diode mixer which is designed using a newly designed 90 substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) coupler and two cavity (SIW) filters. The mixer covers RF/LO operating frequency range which fluctuates between 10 to 12 GHz and IF port covers 2GHz. The proposed mixer exhibits a fairly low conversion loss of less than 10 dB and high port to-port isolations over the frequency band of interest as the simulated results make clear. Furthermore, the two cavities SIW filter is embedded to achieve a better image frequency suppression of about 28dB. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/ijece.v4i6.6684

InAs nanowire MOSFETs in three-transistor configurations: single balanced RF down-conversion mixers

Integration of III–V semiconductors on Si substrates allows for the realization of high-performance, low power III–V electronics on the Si-platform. In this work, we demonstrate the implementation of single balanced down-conversion mixer circuits, fabricated using vertically aligned InAs nanowire devices on Si. A thin, highly doped InAs buffer layer has been introduced to reduce the access resistance and serve as a bottom electrode. Low-frequency voltage conversion gain is measured up to 7 dB for a supply voltage of 1.5V. Operation of these mixers extends into the GHz regime with a cut-off frequency of 2 GHz, limited by the optical lithography system used. The circuit dc power consumption is measured at 3.9 mW.

14–30 GHz low‐power sub‐harmonic single‐balanced gate‐pumped mixer with transformer combiner in 0.18 μm CMOS

A 14-30 GHz sub-harmonic single-balanced gate-pumped mixer with a wideband transformer combiner in 0.18 μm CMOS technology is presented. The transistors of the sub-harmonic mixer core are biased at weak inversion to lower the required local oscillator (LO) driving power and DC power consumption. The wideband combiner including a Marchand balun and a 1:1:1 trifilar transformer was designed to combine the radio frequency (RF) and LO driving signals to produce four states of signals, where the RF frequency is about twice the LO frequency. Two quarter-wavelength transmission lines are adopted to improve the RF-to-intermediate-frequency (IF) and 2LO-to-IF isolations. The measured results show that the maximum conversion gain of -1 dB is at 18 GHz and a 3 dB bandwidth is from 14 to 30 GHz while applying the LO driving power of only 1 dBm. The total power consumption including the output buffer is only 7.8 mW.

A fully integrated 60GHz four channel CMOS receiver with 7GHz ultra-wide bandwidth for IEEE 802.11ad standard

In this paper, a fully integrated CMOS receiver frontend for high-speed short range wireless applications centering at 60GHz millimeter wave (mmW) band is designed and implemented in 90nm CMOS technology. The 60GHz receiver is designed based on the super-heterodyne architecture consisting of a low noise amplifier (LNA) with inter-stage peaking technique, a single-balanced RF mixer, an IF amplifier, and a double-balanced I/Q down-conversion IF mixer. The proposed 60GHz receiver frontend derives from the sliding-IF structure and is designed with 7GHz ultra-wide bandwidth around 60GHz, supporting four 2.16GHz receiving channels from IEEE 802.11ad standard for next generation high speed Wi-Fi applications. Measured results show that the entire receiver achieves a peak gain of 12dB and an input 1-dB compression point of -14.5dBm, with a noise figure of lower than 7dB, while consumes a total DC current of only 60mA from a 1.2V voltage supply.

A compact wideband ring mixer utilizing a pair of PLANAR transitions for phase inversion

A new design of a compact wideband ring mixer is introduced in this article. The proposed mixer utilizes a compact ring structure comprising a pair of ultra-wideband planar in-phase and inverted-phase transitions as a mixer balun. The implemented mixer has a number of desirable features such as wide bandwidth (∼120%), compact size, excellent port-to-port isolations, and return loss. The size of the proposed mixer is 33.2% of the conventional single-balanced ring mixers. The measured results show flat conversion loss of ∼8.5 dB and greater than 20 dB port-to-port isolation from 3 to 12 GHz. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 56:1919–1922, 2014

InAs nanowire MOSFET differential active mixer on Si‐substrate

An active single balanced down-conversion mixer is implemented using InAs nanowire metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) as both active devices and passive resistive loads. Circuits with 6 dB low-frequency voltage gain and a 3 dB bandwidth of 2 GHz are measured for a DC power consumption of 3.8 mW from a 1.5 V supply. The circuits are fabricated using contacts made with 12 μm-line-width optical lithography.

Transformer-Based Broadband High-Linearity HBT ${ Gm}$-Boosted Transconductance Mixers

A Gm-boosted transconductance configuration mixer is proposed. Based on this topology, two broadband monolithic InGaP HBT mixers, one single device and one balanced, have been developed for C- Ku-band applications. The single device mixer has a conversion gain of 4.5±1.5 dB within the RF frequency range from 5 to 17 GHz. The balanced design has about 3.5±1.5-dB conversion gain within a frequency range of 6-18 GHz. The two mixers have very good linearity with a third-order intermodulation intercept point (IIP3) higher than 16 and 20 dBm for the single device mixer and single balanced mixer, respectively. Both mixers are pumped by a local oscillator power of 5 dBm. To the authors' best knowledge, the designed mixers demonstrate the highest IIP3 with positive conversion gain in this frequency range. Compact designs are achieved with chip sizes less than 0.5 mm2. DC power consumptions are 30 and 50 mW, for the single device and single balanced mixer, respectively.

A DIFFERENTIAL K-BAND UWB TRANSMITTER FOR SHORT RANGE RADAR APPLICATION WITH CONTINUOUS RUNNING LOCAL OSCILLATOR

The design of a difierential K-band UWB (Ultra Wideband) Short Range Radar (SRR) transmitter in 90nm bulk CMOS is presented. Implementation of SRRs in deep submicron CMOS technology is attractive, in terms of cost and monolithic integration of RF font-end with signal base- band processor. The transmitted pulse bandwidth limits the range resolution of the radar system. Due to the wide bandwidth and high frequency of CMOS implementation, UWB transmitters in the K-band are challenging to make and critical for the system performance. The design presented is based on frequency up conversion using a double balanced mixer. The difierential output is combined and matched with the antenna using an on-chip balun. To mitigate local oscillator (LO) leakage of UWB difierential transmitters we propose a new Pulse Generator (PG) design. A switching technique is used to minimize the LO leakage enabling continuous wave operation with very wideband pulses. Measurements of the proposed transmitter achieves a i10dB bandwidth (BW) of 5GHz. Using a Pulse Repetition Frequency (PRF) of 100MHz the peak average power is i40dBm. Compared to measured transmitter performance of a single balanced mixer design, the LO leakage of this dual balanced mixer is decreased with more than 20dB, and is lower than the peak average power of the pulse. It consumes 11mW from a 1.2V supply where 6mW is from the LO.

A Low-Power Quadrature Local Oscillator Using Current-Mode-Logic Ring Oscillator and Frequency Triplers

This letter presents a current-mode-logic (CML) ring oscillator integrated with two frequency triplers for quadrature local-oscillator generation. Quadrature signals and frequency-doubled signals of the CML ring oscillator are propagated to drive two single-balanced mixers for up-converting the frequency by triple and achieving quadrature output and low power consumption. Fabricated by a TSMC 90 nm CMOS technology, the proposed circuit consumed 8.7 mW dc power at a 1.2 V supply voltage and achieved an output frequency of 16.56 to 19.8 GHz (17.8%) at a Vtune of 0 to 1.2 V. The phase noise of - 104.6 dBc/Hz was measured from the output signal at a 1 MHz offset frequency. A remarkable figure of merit with a tuning range evaluated at - 188.4 was also obtained.

An Ultra-low-power Integrated RF Receiver for Multi-standard Wireless Applications

In this paper, an ultra-low-power integrated RF front end for multi-standard is proposed. It contains a current-reuse low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a single-balanced mixer. The double resonances network helps to achieve a good input impedance matching in the required band and suppress out-of-band noise. The stacked common source (CS) LNA is adopting current-reuse of the two amplifier stages and re-using bleeding current of the mixer, which save working current considerably. By employing forward body bias technique, the proposed circuit can operate at a reduced supply voltage. In addition, the local oscillator (LO) signal forward body bias technique improves the transistors’ switching characteristic, which optimizes noise figure (NF) and linearity performances simultaneously. Fabricated in the chartered 0.18-μm RF CMOS technology, the S11 of the front-end is below −14 dB in 935~960 MHz, below −11 dB in 1805~2483 MHz. It achieves a conversion gain of 18.6~20.8 dB, the double sideband (DSB) NF of 2.3~5.1 dB. The IIP3 are −8.2 dBm at 935 MHz and −9.8 dBm at 2100 MHz. It consumes 2.1 mA from a 1 V supply voltage and occupies an active area of only 0.61 × 0.53 mm2.

2.5–7 GHz single balanced mixer with integrated Ruthroff‐type balun in 0.18 µm CMOS technology

An on-chip Ruthroff-type balun fabricated in tsmc TM 0.18 μm CMOS technology has been realised and used in a single balanced mixer. By using the phase compensation line and appropriately choosing the characteristic impedance of transmission lines, the balun was realised with a minimum insertion loss of 0.71 dB and the 1 dB bandwidth over a frequency range from 3.2 to 8.4 GHz. The compact size of 0.088 mm 2 is achieved owing to the short length of the transmission line winding, approximately 1/18 λ g , and the adoption of broadside-coupled and spiral-shape structures. A simple single balanced mixer with the Ruthroff-type balun was then designed to demonstrate the capability of the broadband and low-loss balun. A minimum conversion loss of 12.48 dB with a 3 dB bandwidth from 2.5 to 7 GHz was measured at the LO drive of only 6 dBm. The chip area, including pads, is 0.49 mm 2 .

A Compact Ka-Band Doppler Radar Sensor for Remote Human Vital Signal Detection

This paper presents a compact K-band Doppler radar sensor for human vital signal detection that uses a radar configuration with only single coupler. The proposed radar front-end configuration can reduce the chip size and the additional RF power loss. The radar front-end IC is composed of a Lange coupler, VCO, and single balanced mixer. The oscillation frequency of the VCO is from 27.3 to 27.8 GHz. The phase noise of the VCO is ?91.2 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset frequency, and the output power is ?4.8 dBm. The conversion gain of the mixer is about 11 dB. The chip size is 0.89×1.47 ㎟. The compact Ka-band Doppler radar system was developed in order to demonstrate remote human vital signal detection. The radar system consists of a Ka-band Doppler radar module with a 2×2 patch array antenna, baseband signal conditioning block, DAQ system, and signal processing program. The front-end module size is 2.5×2.5 ㎠. The proposed radar sensor can properly capture a human heartbeat and respiration rate at the distance of 50 cm.

A BiCMOS W-Band 2×2 Focal-Plane Array With On-Chip Antenna

This paper presents a W-band 2 × 2 focal-plane array (FPA) for passive millimeter-wave imaging in a standard 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS process (fT/fmax = 200/180 GHz). The FPA incorporates four Dicke-type receivers representing four imaging pixels. Each receiver employs the direct-conversion architecture consisting of an on-chip slot folded dipole antenna, an SPDT switch, a low noise amplifier, a single-balanced mixer, an injection-locked frequency tripler (ILFT), an IF variable gain amplifier, a power detector, an active bandpass filter and a synchronous demodulator. The LO signal is generated by a shared Ka-band PLL and distributed symmetrically to four local ILFTs. The measured LO phase noise is -93 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset from the 96 GHz carrier. This imaging receiver (without antenna) achieves a measured average responsivity and noise equivalent power of 285 MV/W and 8.1 fW/Hz1/2, respectively, across the 86-106 GHz bandwidth, which results a calculated NETD of 0.48 K with a 30 ms integration time. The system NETD increases to 3 K with on-chip antenna due to its low efficiency at W-band. MMW images have been generated in transmission mode. This work demonstrates the highest integration level of any silicon-based systems in the 94 GHz imaging band.