SiGe BiCMOS High Linearity Mixers for Base-Station Applications

This paper describes design issues related to high linearity SiGe BiCMOS active mixers, which are primarily targeted for WCDMA base-station applications. The effect of different mixer components to overall mixer dynamic range is described, and the measurement results from four different implementations are given to support this discussion. The different mixers are implemented using the same process as part of a complete receiver and thus the interface to baseband filter has been taken into account in the performance analysis. Since one of the goals in the mixer design has been to maximize the mixer bandwidth, the frequency limitations of different alternatives are discussed throughout the paper.