A 30–60 GHz Broadband Low LO-Drive Down-Conversion Mixer with Active IF Balun in 65 nm CMOS Technology

TL;DR

This paper presents a low-power, high-frequency mixer for converting signals in the 30-60 GHz range using advanced CMOS technology.

Contribution

The novel design achieves broadband operation with low LO power and low power consumption using a Marchand balun and active IF balun.

Findings

The mixer achieves a conversion gain of −1.2 to 6.4 dB across an IF bandwidth of 0.1 to 5 GHz.

The core mixer consumes 4.8 mW DC power, and with the IF amplifier, it consumes 28.3 mW.

The design is implemented in 65 nm CMOS with a chip area of 0.26 mm².

Abstract

A 30~60 GHz broadband down-conversion mixer driven by low local oscillator (LO) power is presented. The down-conversion mixer utilizes an input signal coupling technique based on the Marchand balun to achieve broadband operation and achieves low LO power drive and low DC power consumption through the use of a weak inversion bias with Gilbert switching devices. The broadband conversion of single-ended to differential signals is achieved using the Marchand balun with compensation lines, and an equivalent circuit analysis is performed. For the intermediate frequency (IF) output, a self-biased IF trans-impedance amplifier with current reusing and an active IF balun structure are used to achieve signal amplification and single-ended signal output. Test results show that the proposed mixer achieves a conversion gain of −1.2 to 6.4 dB in an IF output bandwidth of 0.1 to 5 GHz at radio frequency (RF) input frequencies of 30 to 60 GHz and LO driving power of −10 dBm. The DC power consumption of the core mixing unit of the proposed mixer is 4.8 mW, and the DC power consumption including the IF amplifier is 28.3 mW. The proposed mixer uses a 65 nm CMOS technology with a chip area of 0.26 mm2.

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