A 200-GHz High-Compression, Coupled-Line Common-Base Mixer in 90-nm SiGe Technology

This letter presents a novel fundamental downconverting mixer topology for millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) applications operating beyond <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{max}/2$</tex-math> </inline-formula>. The proposed work achieves high-compression via the use of a cascaded common-base (CCB) gain stage and a novel coupled-line coupler (CLC)-based switching stage, with triaxial balun-based matching networks at the RF and local oscillator (LO) ports. This architecture is implemented in a 90-nm silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS process technology with an <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{T}/f_{max}$</tex-math> </inline-formula> of 340/410GHz and achieves a state-of-the-art <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$IP_{1{\,}\text {dB}}$</tex-math> </inline-formula> of −3dBm and 4.4dB conversion gain across an operating frequency range of 188–226GHz, while only consuming 111 mW of DC power under saturated LO drive.