Subharmonic Planar Doped Barrier Mixer Conversion Loss Characteristics

Planar doped barrier (PDB) diodes have been successfully used in a subharmonically pumped coplanar-stripline mixer circuit. A comparison is made in the conversion loss of the symmetric and asymmetric PDB diodes. A dramatic decrease in conversion loss is obtained when the PDB diode I-V curve is perfectly symmetric. A minimum conversion loss in the order of 5.0 dB is obtained at a signal frequency of 2.0 GHz.