A Double-Balanced Up-Conversion Mixer Using 90 nm CMOS Technology for 60 GHz Spectrum Frequency

ABSTRACT

Designing an active mixer such as Gilbert mixer for applications at high frequencies is always a challenging task for the designers to deal with. In this article, a double-balanced mixer is proposed using 90-nm CMOS technology for the unlicensed spectrum of 7 GHz around 60 GHz. The design of a mixer for the same frequency range was studied by various authors using 130-nm CMOS technology, but for the purpose of low-power applications, a well-suited method is proposed. The proposed mixer showed very good response and isolation between various ports of mixing circuit. The isolation between RF and LO ports is very crucial for the up-conversion mixers, and in communication systems, the RF isolation will be a critical area to design successful transmitters. The double-balanced up-conversion mixer in this work achieved a better isolation of 40 dB within the range of 56–67 GHz and a conversion gain of 4 dB for the defined frequency range with a power consumption of only 18 mW.

KEYWORDS:

• CMOS technology
• Conversion gain
• Isolation
• Gilbert mixers
• Up-conversion mixers

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Majid Alotaibi

Majid Alotaibi received PhD from The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, in 2011. Currently, he is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Engineering, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. His current research interests include mobile computing, mobile and sensor networks, wireless technologies, Ad-hoc networks, computer networks (wired/wireless), RFID, antennas and propagation, radar, and nano electronics. Email: [email protected]