A generic approach for the optimum design of microwave and millimeter wave balanced subharmonically pumped mixers

We present a generic approach, which can be used to estimate the optimum loading conditions at various idler frequencies and also to give the best achievable performance of balanced subharmonically pumped mixers. This provides designers with a practical guideline for designing such mixers. We demonstrate in this paper through a design example that there is quite a difference in the conversion loss between the nonoptimized loading and the optimized loading conditions of a nonlinear device, namely, 12.8 dB and 2.8 dB in view of theoretical results. Using the proposed method, the designed mixer at 14 GHz has a comparable performance with balanced fundamental mixers except its inherent advantages