A 3-34 GHz GaAs PHEMT Distributed Mixer with Low DC Power Consumption

A low DC power consumption broadband coplanar waveguide (CPW) distributed mixer using 0.15-μm GaAs PHEMT technology has been described in this paper. This MMIC mixer composed of four identical sections with a single-gate PHEMT. From 3 to 34 GHz, the measured results show a conversion loss of better than 6.7 dB, and a DC power consumption of only 6 mW with a DC power supply voltage of 1 V. To the authors' best knowledge, this work is the lowest DC power consumption among all the reported GaAs-based HEMT distributed mixers. The measured LO-to-IF and LO-to-RF isolations are all better than 13 dB, and the measured input IP3 is better than 12 dBm for overall operating frequency band. The compact chip size of this distributed mixer utilizing CPW lines is only 1.8 mm × 1.0 mm.