CMOS bulk-driven mixers with passive baluns

The design, simulation, and measurement of two bulk-driven down-conversion mixers with on-chip transformer baluns in 0.18 μm CMOS is presented. Applying either the RF signal or the local oscillator (LO) signal to the bulk connection of the transistors allows the amplification and switching stages of a conventional mixer to be combined into a single stage, thus improving the voltage headroom of the mixer. The addition of a transformer balun to the mixers improves the input impedance match, provides passive voltage gain, and performs single-ended to balanced conversion. A semi-analytical power-series analysis of the mixers is also presented. The mixer in which the RF signal is applied to the gates of the mixing transistors achieves a measured input-referred 1-dB compression point (P1dB) of −14 dBm, an input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of −5.2 dBm, a gain of 13.6 dB, a noise figure (NF) of 26 dB, and an LO-to-RF isolation of 50 dB. The overall performance of both mixers is found to be comparable with other CMOS mixers, but with a higher noise figure (which can be mitigated with a high gain low-noise amplifier (LNA)).

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Applied Science - MASc

Level thesis:degree_level

master's

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

University of British Columbia

Year dc:date

2008

Author dc:creator

• Van Vorst, Daryl

Statement dc:rights

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

Licence

• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Language dc:language

eng

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/1015

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/1015