A compact D-band monolithic APDP-based sub-harmonic mixer. (November 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zhang, Shengzhou; Sun, Lingling; Wang, Xiang; Wen, Jincai; Liu, Jun
• Is Part Of: Solid-state electronics. Volume 137(2017)
• Page Start: 62
• Page End: 69
• Publication Date: 2017-11
• Subjects: D-band sub-harmonic mixer (SHM) -- Large signal equivalent circuit model -- Anti-parallel diode pair (APDP) -- Monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) -- Asymmetric three-transmission-line coupler; Semiconductors -- Periodicals; Semiconducteurs -- Périodiques; 621.38152
• DOI: 10.1016/j.sse.2017.07.001
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0038-1101

Abstract

Highlights: A wide-band equivalent circuit model of schottky diode is proposed. A novel SHM based on an asymmetric three-transmission-line coupler is designed. The coupler is proved to resuce the area and enhance the bandwidth above 100 GHz. Abstract: The paper presents a compact D-band monolithic sub-harmonic mixer (SHM) with 3 μm planar hyperabrupt schottky-varactor diodes offered by 70 nm GaAs mHEMT technology. According to empirical equivalent-circuit models, a wide-band large signal equivalent circuit model of the diode is proposed. Based on the extracted model, the mixer is implemented and optimized with a shunt-mounted anti-parallel diode pair (APDP) to fulfill the sub-harmonic mixing mechanism. Furthermore, a modified asymmetric three-transmission-line coupler is devised to achieve high-level coupling and minimize the chip size. The measured results show that the conversion gain varies between −13.9 dB and −17.5 dB from 110 GHz to 145 GHz, with a local oscillator (LO) power level of 14 dBm and an intermediate frequency (IF) of 1 GHz. The total chip size including probe GSG pads is 0.57 × 0.68mm 2 . In conclusion, the mixer exhibits outstanding figure-of-merits.