An Analysis of the Diode Mixer Consisting of Nonlinear Capacitance and Conductance and Ohmic Spreading Resistance

A method is presented for calculating the mixer admittance matrix Y' which results when an ohmic impedance is connected in series with a diode mixer described by an admittance matrix Y. There are no restrictions on the frequency dependence of the ohmic impedance nor on the number of harmonic sidebands considered. The equations are worked out in detail for the "low Q" case in which signal, image, and intermediate frequencies are considered, and it is shown that Y' in this case is "nearly low Q." As a result of this analysis the usual criterion for good high-frequency mixing, i.e., that the product of the spreading resistance and the barrier capacitance be small compared with unity, is criticized and a new figure of merit is proposed. Explicit formulas have been derived for calculating the elements of Y' when Y represents the parallel combination of a nonlinear conductance and capacitance. In general, these formulas are cumbersome, but three special cases have been considered in detail.