A highly linear mixer with inherent balun using a new technique to remove common mode currents

A highly linear active mixer is introduced for IEEE 802.11 applications. It uses a new technique to remove the common mode currents in all frequencies. In zero-IF receivers, IIP2 is the most important parameter which shows the output´s IM2 nonlinearity. In this paper, IIP2 improves more than 17 dBm by removing its common mode current. Also, the new technique, improves IIP3 more than 5dBm in comparison with a simple Gilbert-Cell mixer at equal conversion gain. These are achieved at the cost of 0.8 dB increase in NF and 0.6 mA more current dissipation. Simulations are performed in a 90 nm RF-CMOS technology by HSPICE-RF.