Micromechanical Mixer+Filters

A device comprised of interlinked micromechanical resonators with capacitive mixer transducers has been demonstrated to perform both low-loss frequency translation (i.e. mixing) and highly selective filtering of applied electrical input signals. In particular, successful down-conversion of radio frequency (RF) signals from 40-200MHz and subsequent filtering at a 27MHz intermediate frequency (IF) with less than 15dB of combined mixing conversion and filter insertion loss is demonstrated using this single, micromechanical device. Mixing conversion gainfloss is shown to depend upon a ratio of local oscillator amplitude and applied bias voltages. A single-sideband (SSB) noise figure of 18dB is achieved.