An E-band Double-Balanced Subharmonic Mixer With High Conversion Gain and Low Power in 90-nm CMOS Process

In this letter, an E-band double-balanced subharmonic down conversion mixer is presented. The proposed mixer demonstrates a conversion gain (CG) of 5.3 ~ 9 dB at RF frequencies 70-88 GHz under local oscillator (LO) power -4 dBm. The input 1-dB compression power (IP1 dB) and the input third-order intercept point (IIP3) at RF frequency of 77 GHz are -13 and -3 dBm, respectively. The 2LO-to-RF isolations of RF frequencies 70-88 GHz are all better than 40 dB. The overall dc power consumption (dc bias with injecting LO power) is 5 mW. The mixer is fabricated in a TSMC 90-nm CMOS process and it occupies an area of 0.3195 mm
²
. By applying weak-inversion region to generate subharmonic mixing function and with the combination of LO gate-pumped operation and source-pumped operation, this proposed mixer achieves high CG and low LO power with low dc power consumption among the published subharmonic mixers.