Design of 50–75 GHz V-band low power and high gain down-conversion mixer

This paper presents the design of V-band low power down-conversion mixer operating in weak inversion biasing region using 90-nm CMOS technology. The mixer exhibits a double-balanced Gilbert cell structure in source-driven topology with RF signal applied at the gate and local oscillator (LO) signal at the source. It achieves high conversion gain of 7.297 dB at RF signal of 60 GHz at standard supply voltage of 1.2 V. Other performance parameters measured are LO-to-RF port isolation as more than 40 dB, the third-order input intercept point (IIP3) as -1.692 dBm, OP_1dB as -7.382 dBm and DC power consumption of 548 μW at LO power of -6 dBm indicates that this mixer is suitable for low power millimeter-wave (MMW) radio applications. The mixer is designed and simulated using Agilent´s Advanced Design System (ADS).