A 0.18-μm CMOS High-Performance Up-Conversion Mixer for 2.4-GHz Transmitter Application

In this paper, a low-voltage low-power up-conversion mixer, designed in the chartered 0.18-mm RFCMOS technology, is proposed to realize the transmitter front-end in the frequency band of 2.4 GHz. The proposed mixer uses the dual current-reuse and current-bleeding techniques in both the driver and switching stages with a simple impedance degeneration. The proposed mixer can convert a 10 MHz intermediate frequency (IF) signals to a 2.4 GHz RF signals, with a local oscillator (LO) power of 2dBm at 2.39 GHz. A comparison with conventional CMOS up-conversion mixer shows that this mixer has advantages of low-voltage, low-power consumption and high performance. Simulation results demonstrate that at 2.4 GHz, the circuit provides 6.3 dB of conversion gain and the input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 13.45dBm, while drawing only 4 mA for the mixer core under a supply voltage of 1.2 V. The chip area including testing pads is only 0.7 mmÔ0.8 mm. Index Terms – Up-conversion mixer, CMOS, current-reuse, current-bleeding, high linearity, low power

[1]  Giuseppe Palmisano,et al.  A 1.5-V 0.25-μm CMOS up-converter for 3–5 GHz low-power WPANs , 2007 .

[2]  Yeong-Her Wang,et al.  A Novel Doubly-Balanced Folded Mixer for Low Supply Voltage and Direct Up-Conversion System , 2006, 2006 8th International Conference on Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology Proceedings.

[3]  Huei Wang,et al.  A Low Power Folded Mixer for UWB System Applications in 0.18-$\mu$m CMOS Technology , 2007, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[4]  Trung-Kien Nguyen,et al.  Low power high linearity transmitter front-end for 900 MHz Zigbee applications , 2006, 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[5]  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.

[6]  K. Bult,et al.  A class of analog CMOS circuits based on the square-law characteristic of an MOS transistor in saturation , 1987 .

[7]  T. Manku,et al.  A charge-injection method for Gilbert cell biasing , 1998, Conference Proceedings. IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (Cat. No.98TH8341).

[8]  K.K. O,et al.  A low-power up-conversion CMOS mixer for 22-29-GHz ultra-wideband applications , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[9]  Barrie Gilbert,et al.  A precise four-quadrant multiplier with subnanosecond response , 1968, IEEE Solid-State Circuits Newsletter.

[10]  Mei-Ling Yeh,et al.  A Low-Voltage 5-GHz Quadrature Up-Conversion Mixer for Wireless Transmitter , 2006, 2006 International Conference on Communications, Circuits and Systems.

[11]  A. Karanicolas.  A 2.7 V 900 MHz CMOS LNA and mixer , 1996, 1996 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of TEchnical Papers, ISSCC.

[12]  W. Che,et al.  Investigation on quality factor of substrate‐integrated waveguide resonance cavity , 2007 .

[13]  Asad A. Abidi,et al.  CMOS mixers and polyphase filters for large image rejection , 2001, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[14]  Salvatore Pennisi,et al.  High-linear class AB transconductor for high-frequency applications , 2000, 2000 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems. Emerging Technologies for the 21st Century. Proceedings (IEEE Cat No.00CH36353).