An ultra-low-voltage CMOS mixer using switched-transconductance, current-reuse and dynamic-threshold-voltage gain-boosting techniques

In this paper, an architecture for ultra-low-voltage radio-frequency (RF) CMOS mixers is introduced. The structure uses switched-transconductance technique in conjunction with current-reuse and dynamic-threshold-voltage gain-boosting techniques to reduce the required supply voltage and power consumption while providing a high conversion gain. As a proof-of-concept, a 2.5-GHz down-conversion mixer is designed and laid out in a 0.13-μm CMOS process. Post-layout simulation results show that the mixer achieves a conversion gain of 13 dB, double-side-band (DSB) noise figure (NF) of 12.7 dB and input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of -3.08 dB while consuming 480 μW from a 0.35-V supply.