A 60 GHz Folded Switching Stage Down-Conversion Mixer with 21 dB Conversion Gain in 22 nm FDSOI Technology

The design and characterization of a millimeter wave single balanced down conversion mixer implemented in a 22 nm fully depleted silicon on insulator technology is presented. The circuit is based on a novel folded topology employing an nFET based cascode transconductance stage and pFET based switching stage with LC biasing. The circuit also features a backgate based output offset voltage correction. Characterization results show that the RF and LO signal ports are matched to better than 10 dB return loss in a frequency band from 55 GHz to 64 GHz. A peak voltage conversion gain of 21 dB is obtained with an LO power of −3 dBm. The circuit consumes 5.25 mW power from a 1 V power supply and occupies an area of 0.675 mm
²
including pads. To the knowledge of the authors, the mixer has one of the best conversion gain to DC power ratio among 60 GHz CMOS mixers reported in literature.