1.0 V low voltage CMOS mixer based on voltage control load technique

Abstract

CMOS active mixer based on voltage control load technique which can operate at 1.0 V supply voltage was proposed, and its operation principle, noise and linearity analysis were also presented. Contrary to the conventional Gilbert-type mixer which is based on RF current-commutating, the load impedance in this proposed mixer is controlled by the LO signal, and it has only two stacked transistors at each branch which is suitable for low voltage applications. The mixer was designed and fabricated in 0.18 μm CMOS process for 2.4 GHz ISM band applications. With an input of 2.44 GHz RF signal and 2.442 GHz LO signal, the measurement specifications of the proposed mixer are: the conversion gain (G_C) is 5.3 dB, the input-referred third-order intercept point (P_IIP3) is 4.6 dBm, the input-referred 1 dB compression point (P_1dB) is −7.4 dBm, and the single-sideband noise figure (N_FSSB) is 21.7 dB.

Keywords

CMOS active mixer / voltage control load technique / low voltage

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