Abstract

The authors present the first SiGe HEMT mixer integrated circuit. The active mixer stage, operating up to 10GHz RF, has been designed and realized using a 0.1µ µµ µm gate length transistor technology. The design is based on a new large-signal simulation model developed for the SiGe HEMT. Good agreement between simulation and measurement is reached. The mixer exhibits 4.0dB and 4.7dB conversion loss when down-converting 3.0GHz and 6.0GHz signals, respectively, to an intermediate frequency of 500MHz using high-side injection of 5dBm local oscillator power. Conversion loss is less than 8dB for RF frequencies up to 10GHz with a mixer linearity of –8.8dBm input related 1dB compression point.