A 1-V 900-MHz CMOS cascaded even-harmonic mixer

To achieve high level of integration and reduce bill of material (BOM), direct down- conversion architecture has become popular for RF receivers. In spite of many associated benefits, direct conversion receivers (DCR) suffer from signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation because of DC offset. This paper proposed the cascaded even-harmonic mixer architecture to reduce the supply voltage requirement. Operated at 1 V, the 0.18-mum CMOS even-harmonic mixer consumes only 1.4 mW and achieves 3-dB conversion gain. The measured LO-to-IF and LO-to-RF isolations are 44 dB and 58 dB, respectively.