Harmonic Mixing with an Antiparallel Diode Pair

An analytical and experimental investigation of the properties of an antiparallel diode pair is presented. Such a configuration has the following unique and advantageous characteristics as a harmonic mixer: 1) reduced conversion loss by suppressing fundamental mixing products; 2) lower noise figure through suppression of local oscillator noise sidebands; 3) suppression of direct video detection; 4) inherent self protection against large peak inverse voltage burnout. These results are obtained without the use of either filters or balanced circuits employing hybrid junctions.