A Low-Power W-Band SiGe-HBT Double-Balanced Up-Conversion Mixer With an Integrated Second-Order IF Low-Pass Filter

A low-power W -band (75-110 GHz) double-balanced up-conversion mixer using a 0.13 mu m SiGe:C BiCMOS technology with f(T)/f(max )= 250/370 GHz is presented. The mixer includes on-chip transformer baluns at the LO and RF ports for on-wafer characterization. At 91.3 GHz, the active mixer achieves a single sideband (SSB) power conversion gain of 4.1 dB with a 3-dB RF bandwidth (BW) of 30 GHz from 78.1 to 108.3 GHz, covering almost the entire W -band. The linearity performance, characterized by OP1dB and P-sat , is 0.6 and 1.8 dBm, respectively while consuming only 11 mW from a 1.8 V supply. Moreover, a second-order IF LC low-pass filter (LPF) with a cutoff frequency of 1.4 GHz is integrated to provide an additional spurious suppression of similar to 12 and similar to 19 dB at the second and third harmonic of the fundamental IF (i.e., 1.25 GHz). The overall chip area, including the IF LPF is 990 x 540 mu m (0.53 mm 2 ). To the best of authors' knowledge, the active up-conversion mixer achieves the lowest power consumption along with the highest OP1dB / P-sat and 3-dB RF BW reported among all prior published W -band SiGe-HBT up-conversion mixers.