A low power and high conversion gain 60-GHz CMOS up-conversion mixer using current injection and dual negative resistance compensation techniques

A 60 GHz double-balanced mixer for direct upconversion using standard 90 nm CMOS technology is reported. The up-conversion mixer comprises an enhanced double-balanced Gilbert cell with current injection for power consumption reduction, and negative resistance compensation for conversion gain (CG) enhancement, a Marchand balun for converting the single LO input signal to differential signal, and another Marchand balun for converting the differential RF output signal to single signal. The mixer consumes 8.83 mW and achieves IF-port input return loss of -12.3 dB at 0.1 GHz, LO-port input return loss of -15.4 ~ -26.7 dB and RF-port input return loss of -12.1 ~ -28.5 dB for frequencies 57~64 GHz. At IF of 0.1 GHz, the mixer achieves CG of 2 dB and LO-RF isolation of 48.8 dB at RF of 60 GHz. The corresponding 3-dB bandwidth of RF is 4.4 GHz (57.7~62.1 GHz). To the authors´ knowledge, the LO-RF isolation and power consumption are one of the best results ever reported for a 60 GHz CMOS/BiCMOS up-conversion mixer. In addition, the measured output 1-dB compression point and input third-order inter-modulation point are -10.1 dBm and -2.15 dBm, respectively, at RF of 60 GHz.