Proposing a Subharmonic Downconverting IQ-Mixer for mm-Wave 6G and Other D-Band Applications

Modern communication systems are driven to increasingly higher operating frequencies to maximize absolute bandwidth and thereby data rate. However, getting closer to the technologies f<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">max</inf>, signal generation becomes increasingly inefficient. Especially generating the high amplitude LO signal for downconverting mixers, which are a key component in communication systems, is affected by this inefficiency. Therefore, we propose a fully differential subharmonic downconversion IQ mixer in a 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS technology to enable efficient generation of the LO signal subharmonicly. A measured image rejection ration of up to 26.3 dB is achieved and demonstrates a differential, subharmonic IQ-mixer in the D-Band. It offers maximum conversion gain of 4.5 dB at a supply voltage of 3.3 V and a power consumption of 67 mW.