Low Power High Linearity 14-23 GHz SiGe HBT Downconversion Mixer

This paper presents a low power, highly linear RF to IF down-conversion mixer operating at 14-23 GHz RF frequency in a 0.13micrometer SiGe:C BiCMOS technology. The mixer is designed as a modified Gilbert cell topology where the RF transconductance stage is replaced by a passive input matching network, thus reducing the supply voltage requirement and increasing linearity. The mixer consumes only 2.08 mW of power from a 1.5 V supply voltage while exhibiting a conversion gain of around -3 dB and a noise figure (NF) of <12 dB at the frequency of interest. The down-conversion mixer has input 1dB compression point (IP1dB) of -5 dBm and third-order intercept point (IIP3) of +2 dBm. The results show that the presented down-conversion mixer achieves comparable performance to state-of-the-art mixers at this frequency range consuming very low power.