A fully integrated CMOS up-conversion mixer with input active balun for wireless applications

This paper presents a fully integrated CMOS up-conversion mixer with input active balun at 5.2 GHz for wireless applications. The design based on Gilbert-cell active double-balanced mixer with integrated on-chip input active balun is proposed by using TSMC 0.18 μm technology. Core mixer employs derivative superposition method to obtain high linearity. A designed active balun which converts single-ended input to differential signals for intermediate frequency (IF) signal is designed and integrated with core mixer. The up-conversion mixer converts an input of 100 MHz IF signal to an output of 5.2 GHz radio frequency (RF) signal with a local oscillator (LO) frequency of 5.1 GHz. The simulation results indicated that the proposed method shows 8-dBm higher input third order intercept point (IIP3) than the conventional mixer. From the simulation results, the mixer achieves an IIP3 of 8-dBm, conversion gain of 4.5-dB, and consumes only 2.48-mW power at 1.8-V power supply.