Design and implementation of highly linear and low power CMOS passive mixer for 2.4GHz application

Abstract

This work focuses on the design of the downconversion mixer in the RF systems using CMOS technology. This paper presents the 2.4GHz downconversion mixer that consists of the proposed NMOS passive mixer, LO balun and IF amplifier in 0.35㎛ CMOS process. That will be used in a block of one chip MICROS(Micro Information and Communication Remote Object-oriented Systems). Also, it can be used in the bluetooth wireless applications. The measured results of the proposed NMOS passive mixer are conversion loss of -100dB, input P1dB of -5dBm, input referred IP3 of 10.5dBm and power consumption of only tens of uW when LO input power is -5dBm. The performance of the proposed NMOS passive mixer is better than that of other existing MOS passive mixer. The simulation results of the designed downconversion mixer including the proposed NMOS passive mixer, LO balun and IF amplifier are conversion gain of 6.6dB, input P1dB of -8.5dBm, IIP3 of 5dBm and power consumption of about 19mW. The performance of the designed downconversion mixer is superior to that of the active CMOS Gilbert mixer. It consumes below the half power of that conventional one but still have good performance. Because of its high performance with low power consumption in CMOS technology, that provides a good prospect to single chip.