A 60 GHz down-conversion mixer with variable gain and bandwidth in 130 nm CMOS technology

This paper presents a 60 GHz Gilbert-cell down-conversion mixer in 130 nm RF CMOS technology. In order to enhance the mixer gain and noise performance, inter-stage inductors are used between the switching pairs and the transconductance stage. Also, for the same purpose, the current bleeding/injection technique is adopted which allow us to control both the Conversion Gain (CG) and Bandwidth (BW). Due to the differential mixer structure, two on-chip baluns are used, for the transformation of the single-balanced signal to differential. The baluns show less than 1° and less than 0.2 dB phase and amplitude imbalance, respectively. With a 60 GHz -30 dBm radio-frequency (RF) signal and a 56.8 GHz 2 dBm local-oscillator (LO) signal, the mixer achieves a conversion gain of 15 dB and a noise figure lower than 11 dB. The circuit is biased with a 1.2 V supply voltage and the total power consumption is about 16 mW.