IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 46, NO.

3, MARCH 1999 231

Monolithic RF Active Mixer Design

Keng Leong Fong, Member, IEEE, and Robert G. Meyer, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—An overview of monolithic radio-frequency (RF) ac-

tive mixer design is presented. The paper is divided into two parts.
The first part discusses the performance parameters that are
relevant to the design of downconversion mixers, and how they
affect the system performance. The second part presents three
common kinds of mixer topologies, namely, unbalanced, single-
balanced, and double-balanced designs. This paper concentrates Fig. 1. RF front-end.
on active mixers only. The advantages and disadvantages, as well
as the design and optimization techniques for the three kinds of
mixers, are discussed. Downconversion mixers perform frequency conversion by
using nonlinear elements in time-varying circuits. The nonlin-
Index Terms—Analog integrated circuits, circuit optimization,
MIMIC’s, MMIC circuits, mixers, nonlinear circuits.
ear operation is difficult to describe analytically, and hence
optimization becomes very difficult. In addition to magnitude
changes and phase shifts as in a linear system, signals and
I. INTRODUCTION noise also undergo frequency shifts in a time-varying non-
linear system. As a result, many active mixers realized in
T HE rapid growth of portable wireless communication
systems, such as wireless (cordless and cellular) phones,
global positioning satellite (GPS), wireless local area network
silicon technology are not optimized, and have relatively poor
performance (high noise figure and poor linearity).
(LAN), etc., has increased the demand for low-cost and high- This paper is divided into two parts. This first part
performance front-end receivers. This presents a challenge to (Section II) discusses performance parameters relevant to
radio frequency (RF) circuit designers to find optimal solutions the design of downconversion mixers, and how they affect
for the realization of high-frequency (900 MHz to 3 GHz) the overall system performance. The second part (Section III)
receivers using low-cost plastic packages and high-volume presents common mixer topologies with emphasis on their
silicon technologies. advantages and disadvantages, as well as the design and
Fig. 1 shows a typical RF receiver front-end architecture. optimization techniques.
The downconversion mixer is used to convert the RF signal In terms of conversion gain, mixers can generally be cate-
down to an intermediate frequency (IF) by mixing the RF gorized into passive and active mixers. Passive mixers, such as
signal from the low-noise amplifier (LNA) with the local diode mixers [1], [2], and passive field-effect transistor (FET)
oscillator (LO) signal. This allows channel selection and gain mixers [3], [4], have no conversion gain. On the other hand,
control at lower frequencies where high quality-factor ( ) active mixers have conversion gain which acts to reduce the
filters and variable-gain amplifiers can be constructed eco- noise contribution from the IF stages. Since passive mixers
nomically. Instead of using an IF filter with tunable passband are well documented, this paper concentrates on active mixers
frequency, an IF filter with fixed passband frequency is used, only. The emphasis is on the topologies that can be readily
and the LO frequency is tuned to select the desirable channel. fabricated in integrated circuit technologies.
The LNA is used to amplify the RF signal to reduce the
noise contribution from the mixer. The RF and image-rejection II. PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS
filters are used to reject undesired out-of-band signals. The The parameters that affect the receiver performance can be
downconversion mixer is a very important building block divided into four categories, namely, sensitivity, selectivity,
because its performance affects the system performance and overloading, and power consumption. Sensitivity measures the
the performance requirements of its adjacent building blocks, smallest received signal the receiver needs to achieve a specific
which include the LNA, LO, RF filter, image-rejection filter, bit error rate (BER). It depends on the system noise figure of
and IF stages. the receiver and the demodulation scheme used. Selectivity,
which includes adjacent channel selectivity, image rejection,
Manuscript received July 31, 1997; revised February 23, 1998. This material
is based on work supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Office under and out-of-band blocker rejection, measures the ability to de-
Grant DAAH04-93-F-0200. tect the desired signal and to reject undesired signals. Adjacent
K. L. Fong was with the Electronics Research Laboratory, Department channel selectivity depends on the third-order intermodulation
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA. He is now with Philips Semiconductors, Sunnyvale, performance of the LNA and downconversion mixer, the
CA 94088-3409 (e-mail: [email protected]). selectivities of the IF and baseband filters, and the LO phase
R. G. Meyer is with the Electronics Research Laboratory, Department noise. Image rejection depends on the selectivities of the
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California,
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA. RF and image-rejection filters. Out-of-band blocker rejection
Publisher Item Identifier S 1057-7130(99)01774-7. depends on the selectivity of the RF and image-rejection
1057–7130/99$10.00 © 1999 IEEE
232 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

filters, the desensitization effect [5], [6] on the LNA and

downconversion mixer by the blocker, and the LO phase noise.
Overloading measures the largest desired signal the receiver
can handle while maintaining a specific BER. It depends on
the system 1-dB compression point of the receiver.
Power consumption determines the usage time of a portable
receiver. Although the overall performance of a receiver
depends on the performance parameters of all building blocks,
this section concentrates on the performance parameters of the
downconversion mixer only, and how they affect the system Fig. 2. LO mixes noise to the IF.
performance and the performance requirement of the adjacent
building blocks.

A. Noise Figure
Noise figure (NF) is commonly used in communication
systems to specify the noise performance of a circuit. It
measures the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) degradation caused
by the circuit [2]. In communication systems where the source
impedance is well defined, NF is defined as

NF (1) Fig. 3. LO mixes noise to the baseband.

where and are the noise power of the source impedance

and the input-referred noise power of the circuit, respectively. band is rejected). On the other hand, the double-sideband
The value of NF is meaningless if the source impedance is noise figure is applicable to the homodyne (direct conversion)
not specified. Noise figure is typically expressed in a decibel architecture [7] where the RF signal is converted to the
(dB) scale. baseband directly. Fig. 3 shows how the LO and its harmonics
The system noise factor (noise figure expressed in linear mix noise at various frequencies to the baseband. The term
scale) for the downconverter shown in Fig. 1 is “double sideband” is derived from the fact that two sidebands
of the LO signal are converted to the baseband (LO frequency
NF is in the middle of the RF band). Comparing Figs. 2 and 3,
NF
it is obvious that the mixer in the heterodyne architecture has
NF twice as many noise contributors as that in the homodyne
architecture. Hence, the single-sideband noise power is about
NF 2 times (3 dB) higher than the double-sideband noise power.
NF (2) It is important to notice that a factor of 2 difference in input-
referred noise power does not translate to 3-dB difference in
where and are the insertion gain (less than 1 for noise figures because
passive filters) of the RF filter and the image-rejection filter,
respectively; NF and NF are the noise figures of the
LNA and the downconversion mixer, respectively; and GLNA
is the power gain of the LNA. This equation assumes that the
noise figures of the filters are the same as their insertion losses. where is the input-referred double-sideband noise power
Noise contribution from the IF stage is not included in this of the mixer, NF and NF are the single-sideband
equation. As shown in (2), the LNA needs to have sufficient and double-sideband noise figures of the mixer, respectively.
power gain to reduce the noise contribution from the mixer. However, if is much larger than NF is about
Hence, a mixer with low noise figure is highly desirable in 3 dB higher than NF
order to relax the gain requirement of the LNA.
There are two types of noise figure measures for downcon-
version mixers, namely, single-sideband (SSB) noise figure B. Conversion Gain
and double-sideband (DSB) noise figure. The single-sideband A downconversion mixer should provide sufficient power
noise figure is applicable to the heterodyne architecture where gain to compensate for the IF filter loss, and to reduce the noise
the RF signal is converted to an IF which is the higher contribution from the IF stages. However, this gain should not
than one-half of the image-rejection filter bandwidth. Fig. 2 be too large as a strong signal may saturate the output of the
shows how the LO signal and its harmonics mix noise at mixer. Typically, power gain, instead of voltage or current
various frequencies to the IF. The term “single-sideband” is gains, is specified. The reason is that noise figure is a power
derived from the fact that only one of the sidebands (the RF quantity, and hence it is easier to translate the NF of the IF
band) of the LO signal is converted to the IF (the image stages to the system NF using power gain. Power gain is
FONG AND MEYER: MONOLITHIC RF ACTIVE MIXER DESIGN 233

Fig. 5. Third-order intermodulation product corrupts desired channel.

Fig. 4. Magnitude response of a mixer.
there is no simple relationship between the gain compression
related to voltage or current gain by of the small desired signal and that of the large undesired
signal. The relationship derived in [5] assumes a weakly
(3) nonlinear condition where the gain compression is solely
caused by the third-order term in the transfer function of the
where and are output and input voltages, respectively; circuit. If this were the case, the input blocker power that
and are output and input currents, respectively; caused 1-dB gain compression to the small desired signal
and are load and source resistance, respectively. Although would be 3.1 dB less than the input of the circuit. This
increasing the load resistance by a factor of 2 can increase the describes many practical mixers, but higher odd-order terms
voltage gain by 6 dB, the power gain is increased by only 3 dB. can also be important in the presence of large signals. The
small desired signal can be viewed as amplitude modulation
C. Gain Compression on top of the large blocker which functions like a carrier.
Typically, the modulation signal (the small desired signal) is
A strong signal can saturate a mixer and reduce its power compressed more than the carrier (the large blocker). The
gain. The input 1 dB compression point measures the actual value of input is not the true design criterion
input power level that causes the mixer to deviate from its lin- in many receiver systems. Alternately, a new performance
ear magnitude response by 1 dB. Fig. 4 shows the magnitude parameter, the blocking can be defined as the input
response of a mixer as a function of input signal power. The power of the blocker that causes 1-dB gain compression to
dotted line shows the linear magnitude response of an ideal the small desired signal.
mixer. Due to odd-order nonlinearities and limiting (current
limiting and/or voltage headroom limiting), the conversion
gain of an actual mixer is reduced at high input power level D. Third-Order Intermodulation Distortion
as shown by the solid line. The conversion gain of the mixer Due to the odd-order nonlinearities in the transfer function
is the ratio of output power to input power. The point where of the mixer, two undesired signals in the adjacent channels
the large-signal gain is 1 dB below the small-signal gain is generate third-order intermodulation (IM3) products at the
the In the case where gain compression is caused by output of the mixer. As illustrated in Fig. 5, one of the IM3
limiting, the gain drops abruptly and the output power stays product can corrupt the desired signal if it falls within the
constant as the input signal power exceeds the input In desired channel. If the two adjacent channel frequencies are
the case where gain compression is caused by the odd-order and , respectively, two IM products are generated at
nonlinearities in the transfer functions of the devices used, frequencies and , respectively. At low
the gain decreases more gradually as the input signal power input power level, the IM product is dominated by the third-
exceeds the input order nonlinearity. As the input power increases, higher-order
If the input power of the desired signal is larger than the nonlinearities become more important.
input the desired signal can be distorted at the output The third-order intercept point (IP measures only the
of the mixer. This distortion causes amplitude modulation third-order nonlinearity. Fig. 6 shows the magnitude responses
(AM) to phase modulation (PM) conversion. No information is of the desired signal and the IM3 product. The solid lines
lost if the desired signal is frequency modulated. If the desired are the actual responses. At low input power levels, the gain
signal is phase modulated, the unwanted phase shift due to of the desired signal is constant, and the power of the IM
AM-to-PM conversion may result in detection error, which product increases with the cube of the input power. At high
increases the BER. On the other hand, if the input power of input power levels, the gain of the desired signal is typically
the undesired signal exceeds the input distortion of compressed (gain expansion may happen in class-AB and
the undesired signal does not affect the system performance. class-C circuits), and the IM is no longer dominated by the
However, a strong undesired signal (known as a blocker or third-order nonlinearity. Depending on the phase relationship
interferer) can overload a mixer and cause gain compression of among odd-order nonlinearities, the IM may increase at a rate
the small desired signal if the mixer does not have sufficiently higher or lower than the cube of the input signal power. The
high input [5], [6]. dotted lines are the linear extrapolations of the small-signal
The blocker should not reduce the gain of the small desired magnitude responses of the desired signal and the IM product,
signal by more than 1 dB to avoid increasing the noise respectively. The point where the two extrapolated curves
contribution from the IF stages significantly. Unfortunately, meet is the IP Given the input signal power in the adjacent
234 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

increases the power consumption of the LNA. As shown in

(4) and (5), increasing the gain of the LNA also increases
the input IP requirement of the mixer in order to meet the
system input IP specification. This in turn increases the power
consumption of the mixer [9]. A mixer which requires high LO
drive increases the power consumption of the LO. It may take
up to 10 mA of bias current in an LO output buffer to supply
0 dBm of LO power into the 50 LO port of the mixer.

Fig. 6. Magnitude responses of desired signal and IM F. Port Return Loss

When a port impedance is not matched to that of the
channels, the power of the IM product can be calculated by source resistance, some of the power delivered to the port
using the IP value. However, the calculated value only applies is reflected back to the source. Return loss is defined as the
to the small-signal IM3 product since the IP value is the result fraction of incident power reflected. The impedance of the
of extrapolation from the small-signal condition. RF and LO input ports is typically matched to 50 while
The system input IP (power quantity in linear scale) for the impedance of the IF output port is matched to that of
the downconverter shown in Fig. 1 is the IF filter. Impedance matching at the RF and IF ports is
necessary to avoid signal reflection and excessive passband
IP (4) ripple in the frequency responses of the filters. Typically,
IP IP return losses of less than dB (voltage wave standing ratio
where IP and IP are the input IP (in power unit) of less than 2) are required. On the other hand, the return loss
of the LNA and downconversion mixer, respectively. This specification on the LO port can be more relaxed. However,
equation assumes that the IM contributions from the filters excessive return loss requires the LO to deliver high power
are negligible since they are passive components, and that the which would increase the power consumption of the overall
IM products from the LNA and the mixer add coherently (in system. Furthermore, excessive LO signal reflected back to the
phase). On the other hand, if the IM products add incoherently LO may cause LO-pulling problem.
(out-of-phase), the system input IP becomes
G. Port Isolation
IP The isolation between LO and RF ports of the mixer
IP IP is important as LO-to-RF feedthrough results in LO signal
(5) leaking through the antenna. The leaked LO signal should be
small enough to avoid corrupting the desired signals of other
As shown in (4) and (5), increasing the gain of the LNA
RF systems. If the downconversion mixer is in a different
decreases the system input IP
package from the LNA, the amount of LO-to-RF feedthrough
The numerical value of the input IP is not directly related
that is allowed depends on the reverse isolation of the LNA,
to that of input because IP measures the small-signal
and the stopband attenuation of the RF and image-rejection
nonlinearity which is dominated by the third-order nonlin-
filters at the LO frequency. On the other hand, if the LNA is in
earity, whereas measures the large-signal nonlinearity
the same package as the mixer, the LO signal can feed through
which includes all odd-order nonlinearities. Furthermore, IP
to RF input port (due to capacitive and inductive coupling
depends on the magnitude of the third-order nonlinearity
among package pins) of the LNA, bypassing the RF filter and
only, but depends on both magnitude and phase of
LNA.
the third-order nonlinearity [8], [9]. If both IP and
LO-to-IF and RF-to-IF isolations are not important because
were dominated by the third-order nonlinearity, the value
the high-frequency feedthrough signals can be rejected by the
of input IP would be 9.6 dB (true for low-frequency case
high- IF filter easily. However, large LO and RF feedthrough
where the third-order nonlinearity is exactly out of phase with
signals at the IF output port may saturate the IF output port,
the fundamental signal) higher than that of input In
and decrease the of the mixer.
many practical designs (one exception is the class AB mixer
described in [6]), the numerical values of IP are more than
9.6 dB higher than those of III. MIXER TOPOLOGIES
Mixer topologies can divided into three categories, namely,
E. Power Consumption double-balanced, single-balanced, and unbalanced designs. In
The power consumption of other building blocks within a this section, the advantages and disadvantages, as well as the
receiver system is as important as that of the downconversion design and optimization techniques for these three different
mixer. While optimizing the power consumption of the mixer, kinds of mixers, are presented. The discussion starts with the
care has to be taken to avoid increasing the power consumption double-balanced mixer. Although the circuit topology looks
of other building blocks. For instance, a downconversion mixer more complicated than the other two kinds of mixers, it is the
with high NF increases the gain requirement of the LNA. This easiest to design and to optimize.
FONG AND MEYER: MONOLITHIC RF ACTIVE MIXER DESIGN 235

A. Double-Balanced Mixer
Fig. 7 shows the basic circuit topology of a double-balanced
active mixer realized in bipolar technology. The mixer com-
prises a differential-pair driver stage ( and ) and a
differential switching quad ( and ). The driver
stage amplifies the RF signal to compensate for the attenu-
ation due to the switching process, and to reduce the noise
contribution from the switching quad. If the RF input signal is
single-ended, one side of the driver stage can be ac grounded.
To reduce the voltage headroom required in a low-supply
design, the tail current source can be implemented by a
resistor [10] or an inductor, and inductors can be used to bias
the IF output ports to the supply voltage [6]. The switching
quad perform the mixing function which converts the RF
signal down to the IF as illustrated in the following equation: Fig. 7. Double-balanced active mixer.

It can be easily shown that a driver stage with reactive

(inductive or capacitive) degeneration has lower NF than that
with resistive degeneration since the degeneration reactance
(apart from its loss resistance) does not introduce an additional
noise source. To reduce the noise contribution from and
(6) large devices with small base resistance should be
used. The bias current should be optimized to reduce
where is the differential output signal current, and
the sum of base and collector shot noise contributions from
are the RF and LO frequencies, respectively, is
and The input-referred noise due to the collector
the RF input signal, and is the transconductance of the
shot noise decreases with bias current, while that due to the
driver stage. This equation assumes instantaneous switching
base shot noise increases with bias current [11]. Ideally, the
(multiplying the RF signal with square wave) of the switching
gain of the driver stage should be maximized (by minimizing
quad. If high-side mixing (LO frequency is higher than RF
the degeneration impedance) to minimize the noise contribu-
frequency) is used, the term is the IF signal, and
tion from the switching quad. However, linearity (IP and
the term is the unwanted signal. The factor
sets the lower limit on the degeneration impedance.
is due to the power lost in the term and other
It can be shown that the differential-pair driver stage using
higher-frequency terms. If low-side mixing (LO frequency
inductive degeneration is more linear than that using resistive
is lower than RF frequency) is used, the and
or capacitive degeneration (with the same bias current and
terms are the wanted and unwanted signals,
transconductance) [9]. In other words, inductive degeneration
respectively. Equation (6) applies to the case where differential
is more current efficient than both resistive and capacitive
output is taken. If single-ended output is taken, the mixing
degeneration.
process is represented by the following equation:
The differential impedance looking into the bases of the
driver stage is given by

(8)

where is base–emitter capacitance of and is

the unity current-gain frequency of and This equation
neglects the effect of collector–base junction capacitance
of and With resistive and inductive degeneration, the
real part of the is supplied by the term and the
term, respectively. Matching networks may
be needed to match the real part of to the source resistance
(7) The imaginary part of has to be cancelled. For
stability reasons, capacitive degeneration is not recommended
where is the single-ended output signal current. The LO since the term is a negative real number, and
and RF feedthrough signals are cancelled at the mixer output, the real part of may be negative (negative resistance may
but the dc component remains. cause oscillation).
To improve the linearity of the differential-pair driver stage, If the gain of the driver stage and its output noise power
it can be degenerated by the impedance which can be were constant across all frequencies, the instantaneous-
implemented by using either resistor, inductor, or capacitor. switching process would increase the input-referred noise
236 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

other disadvantage of using large LO amplitudes is increased

power consumption.
In bipolar transistor technology, differential LO signals
larger than 300 mV are typically used to achieve a low noise
figure [6], [14]. If the switching quad is driven directly by
an external LO, 300 mV of sinusoidal signal is equivalent
to 0 dBm of LO power (assuming LO port is matched to
50 ). It might take up to 10 mA of bias current in an external
LO driver to supply this LO power. Therefore, an LO buffer
is recommended to reduce the LO input power requirement
Fig. 8. Switching process increases input-referred noise power of driver
stage.
[6], [14]. The LO buffer needs to have low noise to avoid
increasing the phase noise of the LO signal.
Reasonably large devices should be used to reduce the
contribution from the driver stage by a factor of (or noise contribution from the switching quad. Small also
3.9 dB) as illustrated in Fig. 8 [12]. The LO and its harmonics reduces the ac voltage drop across which would decrease the
(square wave has no even harmonics) mix noise at various effective LO signal amplitude driving the switching devices.
frequencies down to the IF. In this case, the overall input- However, if the is too large, the switching of can
referred noise power (in linear scale) of the mixer would pump additional current into the common-emitter point of the
be switching quad, and decrease the linearity [12].
In the double-balanced design, the IF output can be taken
input-referred noise of driver stage either single-endedly or differentially with little impact on the
noise contribution from switching pairs (9) linearity performance. The IF output can be taken single-
endedly by using either the IF or IF port. However,
With inductive degeneration, the gain of the driver stage taking the output differentially increases the output power and
decreases with frequency [13]. If high-side mixing (LO fre- conversion gain of the mixer. Furthermore, noise from the
quency is higher than RF) is used, the RF signal (and as- tail current source at the IF can feed through to the
sociated noise) has higher gain than the noise at the image IF output port. This common-mode noise would increase the
frequency. Also, noise at higher frequencies is attenuated by IF output noise power significantly if single-ended output is
the degeneration inductance. In this case, the mixing process taken. Since this noise is common-mode, it can be cancelled by
increases the input-referred noise power of the driver stage by taking the IF output differentially. If a differential IF filter is
a factor of less than On the other hand, if low-side available, both of the IF output ports can be connected directly
mixing is used, the mixing process increases the input-referred to the filter. On the other hand, if the IF filter is single-ended,
noise power of the driver stage by a factor of more than differential to single-ended conversion is needed. This can be
since noise at the image frequency has higher gain than the achieved by using either a transformer or some kind of narrow-
RF signal. Therefore, high-side mixing is recommended if the band current-combining networks [15], [16]. Alternately, an
driver stage uses inductive degeneration. Similarly, low-side IF output buffer can be used (linearity and headroom issues
mixing is recommended if the driver stage uses capacitive should be considered carefully).
degeneration. The basic topology of the double-balanced mixer shown in
As shown in (6) and (7), there are little RF and LO Fig. 7 can also be implemented in FET technologies (GaAs
feedthrough signals at the IF output ports of the double- MESFET [16] or silicon MOSFET [17]). Since the inherent
balanced mixer. In other words, double-balanced mixers reject linearity of an FET is good enough for many applications, the
LO and RF feedthrough. Since the switching quad is a differ- driver stage does not have to be degenerated. Furthermore,
ential structure, a double-balanced mixer also reject LO-to-RF the linearity of the driver stage can be improved by increasing
feedthrough if the switching quad is driven differentially. If where is the gate–source voltage and
the LO input signal is single-ended, an LO buffer can be used is the threshold voltage. Compared to the bipolar design, the
to convert the single-ended LO signal into a differential one. FET switching quad needs to be driven by a larger LO signal
The switching quad should be driven by a large LO sig- to minimize its noise contribution. The reason is that larger
nal to minimize its noise contribution. The switching quad LO voltage swing is needed to turn off one side of the FET
contributes noise to the mixer output when all transistors switching quad.
are active [12], and a large LO amplitude
is needed to reduce the duration of this condition. Linearity,
head room, and power consumption considerations set the B. Single-Balanced Mixer
upper limit on the LO amplitude. A very large LO amplitude Fig. 9 shows the basic circuit topology of a single-balanced
results in excessive current being pumped into the common- active mixer. Due to the simplicity of the circuit, single-
emitter points of the switching quad through the base–emitter balanced mixers have lower noise figure than double-balanced
junction capacitance and thus generates additional mixers. This is because there are fewer noise contributors in
third-order intermodulation [12]. Large LO amplitudes also the single-balanced design. The mixer comprises a common-
decrease the voltage headroom at the mixer output. An- emitter driver stage and a differential switching pair
FONG AND MEYER: MONOLITHIC RF ACTIVE MIXER DESIGN 237

where is the bias current of the driver stage. The

term represents the LO feedthrough.
In other words, single-balanced mixer rejects RF-to-IF
feedthrough (if the IF output is taken differentially), but
not LO-to-IF feedthrough. If the differential pair is driven
differentially, single-balanced mixer also rejects LO-to-RF
feedthrough. On the other hand, if the IF output is taken
single-endedly, there are dc components in both RF and LO
signals. In this case, the mixing process is represented by the
following equation:

Fig. 9. Single-balanced active mixer.

and The driver stage is degenerated by an impedance

to improve its linearity. It can be shown that reactive degener-
ation has better noise performance than resistive degeneration,
and that inductive degeneration is more current efficient than
both resistive and capacitive degeneration [9]. Inductively (12)
degenerated common-emitter driver stages also exhibit class
AB behavior, which can be exploited to reduce the bias current The and terms
required to meet the specification [6], [14]. Compared represent the RF and LO feedthrough signals, respectively.
to the differential-pair driver stage, the common-emitter driver Normally, the RF and LO feedthrough signals at the IF output
stage requires less bias current for the same transconductance ports do not cause problems since the IF filter has high enough
and linearity [9]. The noise performance of the common- stopband attenuation to filter out the unwanted signals at high
emitter driver stage can be optimized in a similar way as the frequencies. However, these feedthrough signals can produce
differential-pair driver stage of the double-balanced mixer. The large signal swings at the IF output ports, and degrade the
impedance looking into the base of the driver stage is given by by saturating the output ports. Hence, capacitors are
needed at the IF output ports to attenuate these high-frequency
feedthrough signals [6], [14].
(10)
Taking the IF output single-endedly or differentially does
not affect the linearity performance. However, taking the IF
With capacitive degeneration, the is a negative output single-endedly would increase the input-referred noise
real number. Negative resistance may cause oscillation. contribution from the driver stage by a factor of (or
Alternately, the driver stage can be implemented by 6.9 dB) if the output noise power of the driver stage were
common-base transconductance stage [12]. Common-base constant across all frequencies. Since there is a dc component
transconductance stage tends to be more linear than common- in the LO signal, noise from the driver stage at the IF can mix
emitter transconductance stage. However, the lack of current with this dc component and increase the noise power at the IF
gain (or low power gain) makes the design very noisy because output ports. If the driver stage is inductively degenerated, it
the noise contribution from the switching pair is not attenuated. has high gain and noise power at the IF. In this case, taking the
The switching pair performs the mixing operation. The IF output single-endedly would increase the NF significantly.
noise and linearity performance of the switching pair can be Therefore, the IF output of the single-balanced mixer has to be
optimized in a similar way as the switching quad of the double- taken differentially (LO signal has no dc component) in order
balanced mixer. In contrast to the double-balanced mixer to minimize the NF [6], [14].
which has no dc components in the LO and RF signals, the Since the RF signal has a dc component, noise from the
single-balanced design has a dc component in the RF signal. LO at the IF can mix with this dc component and increase the
If the IF output is taken differentially, the mixing process can noise power at the IF output port. Therefore, the LO signal
be represented by the following equation: should have low noise power at the IF. If an LO buffer is
used, bandpass or highpass load can be used at the output of
the LO buffer to reduce its noise at the IF [6], [14].

C. Unbalanced Mixer
Figs. 10 and 11 show two different circuit topologies of
unbalanced mixers. The circuits are the simplest among the
active mixers, and hence the unbalanced designs have the
(11)
lowest noise figures. In both topologies, the mixing operation
238 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: ANALOG AND DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

In this case, the driver stage has little gain and noise at the
IF. Similarly, noise from the LO at the IF can mix with the
dc component of the RF signals, and increase the noise power
at the IF output port. Hence, the LO signal needs to have low
noise at the IF.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
The definition of performance parameters that are relevant to
the design of RF downconversion mixers has been presented.
Fig. 10. Single-transistor active mixer. Their relationship with the system performance was discussed.
Three kinds of mixer topologies have been presented. The
unbalanced mixers have the best noise performance, but their
unbalanced nature prevents them from general use in mono-
lithic forms. The double-balanced mixers are the easiest to
design due to their fully balanced structure, but they have
the highest noise figure. The single-balanced mixers are a
compromise between the unbalanced and double-balanced
designs.

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[2] G. D. Vendelin, A. M. Pavio, and U. L. Rohde, Microwave Circuit
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[3] S. Weiner, D. Neuf, and S. Spohrer, “2 to 8 GHz double balanced
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[4] S. A. Maas, “A low distortion GaAs MESFET resistive mixer,” Mi-
crowave J., vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 213–220, Mar. 1988.
is performed by modulating transconductances of the driver [5] R. G. Meyer and A. K. Wong, “Blocking and desensitization in RF
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1995.
shown in Fig. 10 can also be implemented in FET technolo- [6] K. L. Fong, C. D. Hull, and R. G. Meyer, “A class AB monolithic mixer
gies. The LO signal modulates the transconductance of the for 900 MHz applications,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, pp. 1166–1172,
driver stage by varying the base–emitter voltage of Aug. 1997.
[7] C. D. Hull, J. L. Tham, and R. R. Chu, “A direct-conversion receiver
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modulates the transconductance of the driver stage by varying IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 31, pp. 1955–1963, Dec. 1996.
the drain–source voltage of The drain of is [8] D. D. Weiner and J. F. Spina, Sinusoidal Analysis and Modeling of
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regions to maximize the transconductance variation due to common-emitter and differential-pair transconductance stages,” IEEE J.
the LO signal. This design cannot be implemented in bipolar Solid-State Circuits, vol. 33, pp. 548–555, Apr. 1998.
[10] R. G. Meyer and W. D. Mack, and J. J. E. M. Hageraats, “A 2.5
technology since the frequency response of bipolar transistors GHz BiCMOS transceiver for wireless LAN,” in IEEE Int. Solid-State
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monolithic RF downconversion mixers,” Ph.D. dissertation,
nals, unbalanced mixers do not reject RF-to-IF and LO-to-IF Univ. Calif. Berkeley, Berkeley, 1997. Available WWW:
feedthrough. Hence, a capacitor is needed at the IF output port http://kabuki.eecs.berkeley.edu/ fong/.
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RF port through the RF filter. Hence, the magnitude of LO-to- LAN applications,” in Proc. IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conf.,
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FONG AND MEYER: MONOLITHIC RF ACTIVE MIXER DESIGN 239

Keng Leong Fong (S’93–M’93) was born in Kuala Robert G. Meyer (S’64–M’68–SM’74–F’81) was
Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 6, 1970. He received born in Melbourne, Australia, on July 21, 1942. He
the B.A.Sc. degree in engineering science (computer received the B.E., M.Eng.Sci., and Ph.D. degrees
engineering option), and the M.A.Sc. degree in in electrical engineering from the University of
electrical engineering, both from the University of Melbourne in 1963, 1965, and 1968, respectively.
Toronto, Canada, in 1992 and 1993, respectively. He In 1968, he was employed as an Assistant Lec-
received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering turer in Electrical Engineering at the University of
from the University of California at Berkeley in Melbourne. Since September 1968, he has been em-
1997. ployed in the Department of Electrical Engineering
During the summer of 1995, he worked at Rock- and Computer Sciences, University of California,
well International Corporation, Newport Beach, CA, Berkeley, where he is now a Professor. His current
where he was involved in designing class-AB mixers and evaluating CAD research interests are high-frequency analog integrated-circuit design and
tools for nonlinear noise analysis. During the summer of 1996, he worked device fabrication. He has acted as a consultant on electronic circuit design for
in the same company, designing class-AB power amplifiers. Since 1997, numerous companies in the electronics industry. He is coauthor of the book,
he has been working with the Advanced Development Group of Philips Analysis and Design of Analog Integrated Circuits (New York: Wiley, 1993),
Semiconductors, Sunnyvale, CA, where he explores new circuit techniques and Editor of the book, Integrated Circuit Operational Amplifiers (Piscataway,
and supports the next-generation BiCMOS process development. His current NJ: IEEE Press, 1978).
research interest is in the areas of analog integrated circuit design for RF Dr. Meyer was President of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Council and was
applications, BiCMOS process development, and wireless system architecture. an Associate Editor of the IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS and of the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS.