A Study of Operating Modes in Monolithic Distributed Mixers

Abstract

In this paper three different monolithic disvibuted mixers have been characterized in detail in order to identify the dominant operating modes and mixing mechanisms. The first chip is a cascode mixer. using two FETs to mimic the dual-gate FET mixer. The second chip is a novel matrix mixer. which draws on the matrix distributed amplifier concept. The third circuit is a balanced mixer using common-source and common-gate FET pairs. All three circuits operate over 1 to 14 GHz.