A K-band BiCMOS low duty-cycle resistive mixer

This paper presents a double-balanced down-converter based on a low duty-cycle passive mixer that translates a 18.8 GHz RF signal into a 1 GHz IF signal. The resistive mixer is driven by two analog specially designed pulse generators in order to provide very low conversion losses at high frequencies. The chip has been processed using a 0.13μm BiCMOS technology. With a -1.2dBm input LO power, the overall measured conversion gain is 13.2 dB with an estimated contribution of only -2.1 dB from the passive mixer. The measured noise figure is 6.3 dB. The input-referred 1 dB compression point, hardly limited by the IF amp, is -25.7 dB, with -5dBm for the mixer itself. Total power consumption is 109mW.