A double balanced 6-18 GHz GaAs MMIC mixer

A double balanced 6-18 GHz GaAs MMIC mixer was designed, fabricated, and tested. The mixer utilized two coupled-line baluns and four GaAs Schottky diodes. The mixer was fabricated on a 400- mu m GaAs substrate without backside processing or via-holes. It has a typical conversion loss of 7.5 dB over the RF and LO bandwidth of 6-18 GHz and a DC-1.5 GHz IF. Processing of the MMIC mixer is compatible with that of a MESFET based MMIC, such that integration of the diode based MMIC mixer with other functions on the same chip is possible.<
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