W-Band Active Down-Conversion Mixer in Bulk CMOS

A W-band (76-77 GHz) active down-conversion mixer has been demonstrated using low leakage (higher V_T) NMOS transistors of a 65-nm digital CMOS process with 6 metal levels. It achieves conversion gain of -8 dB at 76 GHz with a local oscillation power of 4 dBm ( ~ -2 dBm after de-embedding the on-chip balun loss), and 3 dB bandwidth of 3 GHz. The SSB noise figures are 17.8-20 dB (11.3-13.5 dB after de-embedding on-chip input balun loss) between 76 and 77 GHz. IP_1dB is -6.5 dBm and IIP3 is 2.5 dBm ( ~ -13 and ~ -4 dBm after de-embedding the on-chip balun loss). The mixer consumes 5 mA from a 1.2 V supply.