A linear 70-95 GHz differential IQ modulator for E-band wireless communication

In this paper, a direct IQ modulator MMIC with a novel differential architecture, for high speed E-band wireless communication is presented. The IQ modulator consists of two balanced resistive mixer cells, on-chip marchand balun and differential branchline coupler for quadrature LO signal generation. When operating as a single side band mixer, it shows conversion loss of 11 dB and side-band suppression higher than 20 dB. LO to RF isolation and OIP3 have been measured to be more than 30 dB and 13 dBm respectively, throughout the E-band. To the authors' best knowledge this is the first presented resistive IQ-modulator suitable for the full E-band.