UWB LNA and mixer with an active balun in 0.18μm CMOS process

This work presents low noise amplifier (LNA) and mixer with an active Balun for 8-9 GHz Ultra-wideband (UWB) system. The LNA uses the self-biased method to eliminate the Miller effect and no extra bias circuit is needed. The mixer uses the Gilbert cell topology to enhance the isolation performance. The proposed mixer which uses an active balun at the input port reveals a larger conversion gain than by using a micromixer topology which varies the signals at the transconductance stage. The LNA and mixer are also integrated together on a printed circuit board (PCB). Fabricated in CMOS 0.18μm technology, the conversion gain of LNA and mixer is 17.4 dB when one IF port is terminated to 50Ω. The total power consumption is 41.4 dBm, the LO-to-IF isolation is 35.6 dB, and the 1-dB compression point is -20 dBm.