A SiGe BiCMOS double-balanced mixer with active balun for X-band Doppler radar

In this paper, we present an X-band double-balanced mixer in SiGe BiCMOS technology. The mixer core consists of a LO Matched quad diode ring using diode-connected Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBTs). The mixer is integrated with a low-noise, high-linearity active balun on the RF port and a miniaturized Marchand balun on the LO port. Experimental results shows a conversion gain of +4 dB at 10.5 GHz with an LO drive level of 15 dBm. The LO-IF and RF-IF isolation is better than 36 dB and 26 dB, respectively, in the entire band of operation. The input referred 1 dB compression point is better than -11 dBm. The IIP2 is +13 dBm at a supply voltage of 3 V and +16.5 dBm at a supply voltage of 6 V. The measured noise figure is found to be ~6.5 dB at 10.5 GHz.