A Low-Voltage 5-GHz Downconversion Mixer Employing A Second Harmonic Injection Linearization Technique

In this paper, a low-voltage CMOS mixer topology, appropriate for operation in the 5-GHz frequency band, is presented. The mixer combines several design techniques in order to achieve high linearity performance with minimum current consumption in a restricted 1-V supply. The proposed mixer utilizes an integrated transformer to improve the high frequency performance and to achieve large LO to RF isolation. In addition, a novel linearization technique based on second harmonic injection, is introduced to optimize linearity performance. The design is being implemented in a 0.13-mum CMOS technology.