A 1.5V 900 MHz CMOS current folded-mirror mixer

A CMOS down-conversion mixer using current folded-mirror technique is demonstrated in this paper. Apart from the low voltage operation, the current folded-mirror mixer has a similar performance in gain, linearity, and frequency performance compared with a traditional high voltage mixer. A prototype mixer was implemented in an AMS_® 0.6-micron CMOS technology. The measured 1-dB compression point is -3dBm, IIP₃ is 1 dBm, and the conversion gain is -2.5 dB at an input RF frequency of 900 MHz. The IC consumes 7.5 mW from a 1.5 V supply.