A 200 GHz active heterodyne receiver MMIC with low sub-harmonic LO power requirements for imaging frontends

This paper presents the design and performance of a 200 GHz, sub-harmonically-pumped, heterodyne receiver MMIC realized in 100 nm metamorphic HEMT technology. The lownoise amplifier stage sets the receiver noise figure to 7 dB and, in combination with the resistive down-conversion mixer, allows for an overall conversion gain of 7 dB at 200 GHz RF frequency. The mixer LO port is driven by a frequency doubler and buffer amplifier stage. We use an integrated LO driver amplifier stage with two parallel cascode amplifiers to achieve the operation of the circuit with as low as -13 dBm LO power provided at 100 GHz, thus making the receiver MMIC suitable for multichannel imaging frontends.