A reconfigurable low-voltage and low-power millimeter-wave dual-band mixer in 65-nm CMOS

In this paper, we propose, investigate, and demonstrate a reconfigurable low-voltage and low-power millimeter-wave mixer in a 65-nm CMOS, which can be switched as either a subharmonic mixer (SHM) or a fundamental mixer (FM) for the dual-band applications. Based on a modified Gilbert mixer topology, the proposed CMOS mixer can operate at a low supply voltage and low local oscillator (LO) pumping power while providing good performance in both SHM and FM modes. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported Gilbert SHM based on the stacked switching quads in a low-voltage CMOS technology. Under 1-V supply voltage and -3-dBm LO pumping power, the measured conversion gain (CG) of the proposed CMOS mixer is -4.8 ± 1.5 dB from 34 to 56 GHz and -0.1 ± 1.5 dB from 17 to 43 GHz in the SHM and FM modes, respectively. The measured double-sideband (DSB) noise figure (NF) is 18.5-20 dB from 37 to 49 GHz and 12.4-14 dB from 17 to 35 GHz in the SHM and FM modes, respectively. The measured input third-order intercept point (IIP3) is 2.9 and 3.4 dBm, respectively, for the SHM and FM modes at the LO frequency of 22 GHz. In addition, the total dc power consumption of the proposed mixer including output buffers is 7 mW in both the operation modes.

Uncontrolled Keywords

• CMOS
• dual-band mixer
• fundamental mixer (FM)
• Gilbert mixer
• low-power
• low-voltage
• millimeter-wave (mmW)
• reconfigurable
• subharmonic mixer (SHM)