A 60-GHz Double-Balanced Mixer for Direct Up-Conversion Transmitter on 130-nm CMOS

In this paper a millimeter-wave (MMW) Gilbert-cell up-conversion mixer using standard 130-nm CMOS technology is presented. This mixer has a power conversion gain of better than 2 dB and has the highest reported OP1dB of -5.6 dBm when driven with a LO power of 0 dBm. The LO to RF isolation is better than 37 dB for LO from 57 to 65 GHz. To the authors´ knowledge, this is the first CMOS Gilbert-cell up-conversion mixer operating in 60-GHz frequency band using fundamental LO. Integration of this mixer to a direct up-conversion transmitter has also been demonstrated in this paper. The 60 GHz transmitter achieves an OP1dB of 2 dBm and LO to RF isolation of more than 27 dB from 57 to 65 GHz.