Integrated Receiver Based on a High-Order Subharmonic Self-Oscillating Mixer

In this paper, a novel integrated receiver front-end at 5.8 GHz using a high-order subharmonic balanced self-oscillating mixer (SOM) with a high conversion gain of 11.1 dB is presented, to the authors´ knowledge, for the first time. SOMs are excellent choices for a low-cost receiver design as both the oscillating source and the mixer are combined in one single device. Moreover, the presented structure is of high interest for high-end millimeter-wave systems, as subharmonic operation reduces local oscillator (LO) frequency requirements. The balanced concept of the shown circuit offers inherent RF-LO isolation, lower AM noise, and easy suppression of harmonics. In this paper, the design and performance results of the complete receiver structure are presented both with simulation and measured results and a circuit design model is also developed.