A Folded Current-Reused Down-Converter Mixer for Ultra Wide-Band Applications

This paper demonstrates an ultra-wideband mixer using TSMC 0.18 um mixed-signal/RF CMOS 1P6M technology. The main idea is to replace the traditional common source trans-conductance stage with a folded current-reused pair. It can enhance conversion power gain effectively without additional power consumption. And the folded approach is used to reduce supply voltage. To achieve wideband frequency response, second-order LC ladder wideband input matching network is utilized. This wide-band mixer achieves measured conversion power gain of 13.5-15.5 dB and a DSB noise figure of 11-14.5 dB from 3.1GHz to 8 GHz. The dc power consumption is 11.25 mW under a supply voltage of 1.5 V, with a compact sin of 0.83 mm(2).