Power-area evaluation of various double-gate RF mixer topologies

We analyze the suitability of the double gate MOSFETs (DG MOSFETs) for RF-mixer applications from the point of optimizing the transconductance gain, power consumption, and area. Mixer topologies using the 0.13-μm conventional MOSFETs, simultaneously driven DG MOSFETs (SDDG) and the independently driven DG MOSFETs (IDDG) are compared using extensive device simulations. In the frequency range 1-40 GHz, our simulation results show that the mixer circuits realized using the SDDG technologies show an order of magnitude lower power-area product, for a given transconductance gain, compared to the conventional and the IDDG technologies.