A ku-band high linearity mixer in 0.18 μm SiGe BiCMOS technology

A high linearity mixer with low Local Oscillator(LO) power drive is designed. Focus on the linearity performance and LO drive power of the mixer. The core circuit of the mixer includes comparator, local oscillator driver, double balanced passive mixer and bandgap reference circuit. In order to provide the single to differential conversion of the local oscillator signal path and reduce the mixer's requirements for the local oscillator drive power, comparators and local oscillator driver are introduced, and dual balanced passive mixer is used to provide good linearity. Fabricated in a 0.18 um SiGe Bipolar compatible Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor(BiCMOS) technology, the mixer supports both up conversion and down conversion. The test result shows that the Radio Freqency(RF) port of this design can cover the signal of 6-18 GHz , and the Medium Frequency(MF) port can cover the signal of 0-6 GHz; The typical values of conversion gain in down conversion and up conversion are −10.0 dB and −9.8 dB respectively. The maximum values of IIP3 in the operating frequency band are 23.0 dBm and 23.4 dBm respectively. The power consumption is 500 mW. On the basis of realizing the high linearity mixer, the demand for input local oscillator power is reduced, and the practicability of the high linearity mixer is improved.