Design and Analysis of a 0.8–77.5-GHz Ultra-Broadband Distributed Drain Mixer Using 0.13- $\mu$ m CMOS Technology

A compact and broadband 0.8-77.5-GHz passive distributed drain mixer using standard 0.13-mum CMOS technology is presented in this paper. To extend the operation bandwidth, a uniform distributed topology is utilized for wideband matching. This paper also analyzes the device size and number of stages for the bandwidth of the CMOS distributed drain mixer. To optimize the conversion gain performance of the CMOS drain mixer, a gate bias optimization method is proposed and successfully implemented in the mixer design. This mixer consumes zero dc power and exhibits a measured conversion loss of 5.5 plusmn1 dB from 0.8 to 77.5 GHz with a compact size of 0.67 0.58 mm² . The output 1-dB compression point is -8.5 dBm at 20 GHz. To best of our knowledge, this monolithic microwave integrated circuit has the widest operation bandwidth among CMOS wideband mixers to date with good conversion efficiency and zero dc power consumption.