A 30-100-GHz wideband sub-harmonic active mixer in 90-nm CMOS technology

Jeng-Han Tsai; Hong-Yuan Yang; Tian-Wei Huang; Huei Wang

A 30-100-GHz wideband sub-harmonic active mixer in 90-nm CMOS technology

Date

2008-08-01

Authors

Jeng-Han Tsai

Hong-Yuan Yang

Tian-Wei Huang

Huei Wang

Publisher

IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society

Abstract

This letter presents a 30-100 GHz wideband and compact fully integrated sub-harmonic Gilbert-cell mixer using 90 nm standard CMOS technology. The sub-harmonic pumped scheme with advantages of high port isolation and low local oscillation frequency operation is selected in millimeter-wave mixer design. A distributed transconductance stage and a high impedance compensation line are introduced to achieve the flatness of conversion gain over broad bandwidth. The CMOS sub-harmonic Gilbert-cell mixer exhibits -1.5 plusmn 1.5 dB measured conversion gain from 30 to 100 GHz with a compact chip size of 0.35 mm2. The OP1 dB of the mixer is -10.4 dBm and -9.6 dBm at 77 and 94 GHz, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, the monolithic microwave integrated circuit is the first CMOS Gilbert-cell mixer operating up to 100 GHz.