A GaAs MESFET Balanced Mixer with Very Low Intermodulation

A new type of balanced resistive mixer has been realized by using the unbiased channel of a GaAs MESFET as the mixing element. Because this resistance is only very weakly nonlinear, very low intermodulation results. State-of-the-art second-and third-order output intercept points of 34 and 21 dBm are achieved, with 7 dB conversion loss at X band.