Wide band active Up-Converter MMIC with over 40 dB Isolation in Overlapping RF/IF bands

A wideband up-converting active mixer with better than 40 dB isolation between all ports is demonstrated in this work. The mixer architecture is based on differential active LO and RF balun feeding a diode quad, while the IF input is a passive in-phase power combiner. A highly linear on chip active balun is designed to handle distortion-less LO power upto 14 dBm. The design is based on 0.13µm pHEMT process of GAETEC foundry. The proposed mixer exhibits a very high RF-IF isolation of 40 dB over overlapping RF (1-3.5 GHz) and IF (0.1-2.6 GHz) band. The mixer has a conversion Gain of -11 dB, return losses> 10 dB, port isolations> 40 dB and harmonic suppressions better than 40 dBc. The measured P1 dB input is 11 dBm and IIP3 is 17 dBm making it attractive for wideband receivers for EW applications. The chip size is 3mm X 2mm.