Low voltage high linearity CMOS up-conversion mixer for LTE applications

The purpose of this study was to fabricate a mixer based on the Gilbert cell mixer using the 0.18 µm 1P6M standard CMOS process. The primary target of this mixer was long-term evolution (LTE) small-cell base stations; thus, high linearity was essential. This up-conversion mixer can convert a 100-MHz intermediate frequency into a higher 1.8-GHz radio frequency for wireless applications. A high-linearity mixer was achieved by employing the derivative superposition (DS) method and a source degeneration resistor, while using a folded mixer to achieve low voltages. The post-layout simulation result was a conversion gain of 5 dB, an input third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 14.6 dBm, supply voltage of 1.2 V, and a power consumption of 9.54 mW.