Silicon bipolar double balanced active mixer MMIC´s for RF and microwave applications up to 6 GHz

The authors present an overview of the bipolar technology used to develop double-balanced active mixers using transistors with a gain-bandwidth product of 10 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency of 20 GHz. These circuits are based on Gilbert-cell multipliers and exhibit conversion gain for RF and local oscillator bandwidths to 6 GHz and intermediate-frequency bandwidths to 2 GHz. The basic mixer circuit design is discussed and a technique for modeling its noise figure is presented. RF measurements for two representative designs are summarized.<>