Title :
An Ultra-Low-Voltage and Low-Power
2 Subharmonic Downconverter Mixer
Author :
He, Shan ; Saavedra, Carlos E.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Queen´´s Univ., Kingston, ON, Canada
Abstract :
An 8.6 GHz × 2 subharmonic mixer with complementary current-reuse to enable ultra-low-voltage and low-power operation is presented. The RF transconductance stage of the mixer uses inductive source degeneration and the mixing core uses four transistors that are driven by a quadrature LO signal. A Volterra series analysis is carried out to determine the optimal gate biasing of the transconductor circuit to maximize the third-order intercept point (IIP3) performance of the RF stage and of the entire mixer. Experimental results show that the mixer has a conversion gain of 6.0 dB and an IIP3 of - 8.0 dBm. The entire circuit draws 0.6 mW from a 0.6 V supply. The chip was fabricated in a standard 130 nm CMOS process.
Keywords :
CMOS integrated circuits; Volterra series; low-power electronics; microwave mixers; CMOS process; IIP3 performance; RF stage; RF transconductance stage; Volterra series analysis; complementary current-reuse; conversion gain; frequency 8.6 GHz; inductive source degeneration; low-power ×2 subharmonic downconverter mixer; low-power operation; mixing core; optimal gate biasing; power 0.6 mW; quadrature LO signal; size 130 nm; subharmonic mixer; third-order intercept point performance; transconductor circuit; ultra-low-voltage operation; ultra-low-voltage subharmonic downconverter mixer; voltage 0.6 V; Frequency measurement; Harmonic analysis; Linearity; Logic gates; Mixers; Radio frequency; Transistors; Complementary current-reuse topology; down conversion mixer; moderate inversion; subharmonic mixer; ultra-low power; ultra-low voltage;
Journal_Title :
Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TMTT.2011.2178259