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An Improved Architecture of Sixth Subharmonic Mixers in E-Band

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Abstract

An improved architecture of sixth subharmonic mixers is proposed in this paper. In order to meet the need of low conversion loss, antiparallel diodes are selected and the length of four open/shorted microstrip stubs at both sides of the antiparallel diodes are carefully designed. For any important idle frequency components which can’t be reused by the four stubs, reactive terminations are presented by adjusting the length of main RF and LO microstrip. The tested results indicate the lowest conversion loss is 26.1 dB at the radio frequency of 72 GHz, with fixed LO at 12 GHz. The proposed circuit architecture is suitable for the implementation of subharmonic mixers in E-band as well as other millimeter and submillimeter-wave regions where high quality and high frequency LOs are difficult to realize.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to YiPing Jiang, Yuandan Dong, Tao Wu, Kang Yin’s helpful discussion and simulation assistance in this work.

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Correspondence to Changfei Yao.

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Supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grants 60621002 and in part by NSFC under Grants 60471017.

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Yao, C., Xu, J. An Improved Architecture of Sixth Subharmonic Mixers in E-Band. Int J Infrared Milli Waves 29, 353–359 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-008-9331-3

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