Wideband direct conversion hybrid LCP millimeter-wave 4× subharmonic mixer for gigabit wireless module

In this paper, we describe the realization of highly integrated system-on-package (SOP) millimeter wave module on liquid crystal polymer (LCP). LCP provides an organic, low-cost, low dielectric constant platform suitable for mm-wave passive design and packaging. Here we firstly demonstrate 40GHz planar bandpass filter and RF/baseband duplexer as building blocks of the integrated module. ∼3dB insertion loss and >6GHz RF bandwidth with >30dB isolation between the baseband and RF outputs has been achieved in the measurement. Finally, we present a 40GHz direct conversion hybrid anti parallel diode (APDP) based 4× subharmonic mixer utilizing these building blocks towards system implementation. The mixer has a measured conversion loss of 16dB with >2GHz two-sided bandwidth suitable for gigabit wireless data transmission. A back-to-back up-down conversion block utilizing two 4× mixers has been implemented for the system characterization. Hence we present a hybrid passive mixing solution for multi-gigabit wireless transmission on LCP towards very low-cost, compact mm-wave module.