Compact and broad-band millimeter-wave monolithic transformer balanced mixers

TLDR

The paper reports three broadband miniature monolithic transformer singly balanced diode mixers for microwave and millimeter‑wave operation and proposes a 30‑GHz single‑coiled transformer mixer with comparable performance and reduced chip size. The mixers are designed using coupled‑line equivalent models, yielding a spiral transformer, a 21‑GHz Marchand‑type, and a 30‑GHz single‑coiled transformer, all of which provide direct broadband diode matching to reduce chip area. The spiral, Marchand‑type, and single‑coiled mixers achieve bandwidths of 105 %, 54.5 %, and 100 % respectively, with chip sizes around 0.29 mm² and <0.25 mm², representing the widest bandwidths and smallest chip sizes among passive balanced mixers in the dc‑40 GHz range.

Abstract

Three broad-band miniature monolithic transformer singly balanced diode mixers for operation in the microwave and millimeter-wave bands are reported in this paper. The coupled-line equivalent models are used to synthesize the initial design of these transformers up to 50 GHz. The first one is a broad-band spiral transformer mixer, and the second one is a 21-GHz Marchand-type transformer mixer. These two mixers with chip sizes around 0.29 mm/sup 2/ exhibit bandwidths of 105% and 54.5%, respectively. We also propose a 30-GHz single-coiled transformer mixer, which has comparable performance with the first two mixers and reduced chip size. The single-coiled transformer mixer achieves a bandwidth of 100% with the chip size smaller than 0.25mm/sup 2/. In order to save chip area, all these transformers provide broad-band matching to the diodes directly. To the authors' knowledge, these mixers achieve the widest bandwidths with the smallest chip sizes among all passive balanced mixers using monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit processes in dc-40-GHz frequency range.