Noise Parameters of Gilbert Cell Mixers

This paper describes a method for characterizing mixer noise in terms of several noise parameters. A measurement method for extracting the noise parameters is proposed and verified with simulations of a mixer and measurements of two mixers. Direct measurements of single-sideband noise figures are accurately represented by the measured noise parameters, which fully characterize the noise figure of the mixers for all harmonic impedance loading conditions. Over 606 measurements, the maximum error between the measured and modeled noise factors was less than 0.12 dB. This is the first paper that proposes and verifies a method of mixer noise parameter measurements.