A study of zero-if double-balanced mixer for wimax receivers

Differential approach is becoming highly preferred in radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) design due to its advantages, particularly its high immunity to common-mode noises, satisfactory rejection of parasitic coupling, and increased dynamic range. One particular RF front-end building block that is often designed as differential circuit is the mixer. This paper presents a study and design of a differential mixer, particularly the double-balanced mixer implemented on a zero-IF (zero-intermediate frequency) or direct-conversion architecture in a standard 90 nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process operating at frequency of 5 GHz, which is a typical frequency for worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) receiver. Impedance matching was necessary to fully optimize the mixer design. The zero-IF double-balanced mixer design achieved conversion gain of 11.46 dB and noise figure of 16.53 dB, comparable to other mixer designs.

[1]  Stephen P. Boyd,et al.  Simple accurate expressions for planar spiral inductances , 1999, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[2]  M. Ismail,et al.  A Direct Conversion WiMAX RF Receiver Front-End in CMOS Technology , 2007, 2007 International Symposium on Signals, Circuits and Systems.

[3]  J.Y. Lyu,et al.  A 2˜11 GHz direct-conversion mixer for WiMAX applications , 2007, TENCON 2007 - 2007 IEEE Region 10 Conference.

[4]  Maria Theresa G. de Leon,et al.  Active balun circuits for WiMAX receiver front-end , 2010, TENCON 2010 - 2010 IEEE Region 10 Conference.

[5]  Shyh-Jong Chung,et al.  An Ultra-Wideband High-Linearity CMOS Mixer With New Wideband Active Baluns , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[6]  Tero Koivisto,et al.  Comparison of active and passive mixers , 2007, 2007 18th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design.

[7]  G. Watanabe,et al.  Integrated mixer design , 2000, Proceedings of Second IEEE Asia Pacific Conference on ASICs. AP-ASIC 2000 (Cat. No.00EX434).

[8]  Y.M.M. Antar,et al.  A monolithic double-balanced direct conversion mixer with an integrated wideband passive balun , 2005, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[9]  Frederick Ray I. Gomez.  A Fundamental Approach for Design and Optimization of a Spiral Inductor , 2018 .

[10]  Teresa H. Y. Meng,et al.  Direct-conversion RF receiver design , 2001, IEEE Trans. Commun..

[11]  Thomas H. Lee,et al.  The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits: RF CIRCUITS THROUGH THE AGES , 2003 .

[12]  Kari Halonen,et al.  Design of a high linearity mixer for direct-conversion base-station receiver , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[13]  J. Laskar,et al.  Design and Analysis of Low Flicker-Noise CMOS Mixers for Direct-Conversion Receivers , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[14]  Behzad Razavi,et al.  RF Microelectronics , 1997 .

[15]  Yijun Zhou,et al.  A 5 GHz dual-mode WiMAX/WLAN direct-conversion receiver , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[16]  Ali M. Niknejad,et al.  Analysis and optimization of monolithic inductors and transformers for RF ICs , 1997, Proceedings of CICC 97 - Custom Integrated Circuits Conference.

[17]  Lu Huang,et al.  A 0.18μm CMOS high linearity flat conversion gain down-conversion mixer for UWB receiver , 2008, 2008 9th International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated-Circuit Technology.