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A Novel Circuit Architecture for High Performance of High-order Subharmonic Mixers

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Abstract

A novel circuit architecture for high performance of high-order subharmonic (SH) mixers is proposed in this paper. According to the specified harmonic mixing order, one or more mixer diodes sub-arrays and corresponding power divider as well as phase shift network for RF and LO signals are arranged in the circuit. This proposed SH mixer circuit has improved conversion loss, wide dynamic range and high port isolation for high-order SH mixers. By phase cancellation of idle frequencies, the proposed SH mixer circuit can eliminate complicated design procedure of idle frequency circuits; by phase cancellation of leakage LO power to RF and IF port, and leakage RF power to LO port, the mixer circuit can get high port isolation in LO-IF/RF and RF-LO. The increased antiparallel diode pairs in each sub-array will also lead to well performance by lowering effective series resistance. The proposed SH mixer circuit can be easily realized with power divider and phase shift network for RF and LO signals.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Mr Yiping Jiang’s helpful discussion and assistance in this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, Nanjing, 210096, China

    Changfei Yao & Jinping Xu

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  1. Changfei Yao
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  2. Jinping Xu
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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. A Novel Circuit Architecture for High Performance of High-order Subharmonic Mixers. Int J Infrared Milli Waves 29, 748–757 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-008-9373-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10762-008-9373-6

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