A High Conversion Gain Wideband Mixer Design for UWB Applications

A CMOS mixer with wideband input impedance matching and high conversion gain is presented in this paper. Dual RLC circuits are utilized with Gilbert mixer for wideband input matching. Capacitive feedback, and inductive series and shunt peaking techniques, are used to implement the RF port matching network. Inductive peaking is also adopted to widen the 3-dB conversion gain bandwidth. Active load with AC resistive blocking is employed to boost the mixer conversion gain. The proposed circuit is designed, simulated and implemented in XFAB XH018 process with VDD of 1.8V. It achieves a very good RF matching over a band of 5.6–14.6GHz, with a conversion gain of 25.0–28.2dB over the desired band of frequency.