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A Complementary Current-Mirror-Based Bulk-Driven Down-Conversion Mixer for Wideband Applications

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Abstract

A novel high conversion gain, low power, current-mirror-based bulk-driven mixer implemented in a 0.18 \(\upmu \hbox {m}\) CMOS technology is presented in this paper. The architecture of the proposed mixer consists of the four complementary CMOS current-mirrors that are connected to form a double-balanced bulk-driven down-conversion mixer. The radio frequency (RF) signals are applied to the input terminals of the current-mirrors, and the local oscillator signals are applied directly to the bulk terminals of the current-mirrors’ output transistors, while the intermediate frequency (IF) signals are from the output terminals of the current-mirrors. With the input RF frequency range from 0.5 to 6.0 GHz and the fixed IF frequency of 100 MHz, the simulation results show that the proposed mixer achieves a power conversion gain of 14.0–15.1 dB, an input third-order intercept point of − 3.8 to − 3.0 dBm, and a double-sideband noise figure of 12.1–13.4 dB. A good port-to-port isolation is also achieved across the entire frequency band. The mixer has a compact chip area of 0.25 mm\(^{2}\) without the inductance passive components, and the mixer core dissipates only 3.1 mW under a supply voltage of 1.0 V.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editor for their valuable comments which helped in improving this manuscript. The authors would also like to thank the Project Supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province under No. 2016JJ6095.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Physics and Information Science, Key Laboratory of Internet of Things Technology and Application, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, 410081, People’s Republic of China

    Qiuzhen Wan, Dandan Xu, Hui Zhou & Jun Dong

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  1. Qiuzhen Wan
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  2. Dandan Xu
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  3. Hui Zhou
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  4. Jun Dong
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Correspondence to Qiuzhen Wan.

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Wan, Q., Xu, D., Zhou, H. et al. A Complementary Current-Mirror-Based Bulk-Driven Down-Conversion Mixer for Wideband Applications. Circuits Syst Signal Process 37, 3671–3684 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00034-017-0739-7

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