This paper proposes and presents a millimeter-wave (MMW) fundamental and subharmonic hybrid mixer in a 65-nm CMOS technology. Based on a hybrid structure with two switching quads and a quasi-diplexer, the proposed circuit can function either as a fundamental mixer (FM) or a subharmonic mixer (SHM) for dual-band applications. An application of the MMW hybrid mixer in a concurrent dual-band receiver is also discussed, which indicates that the proposed mixer can operate at two different MMW frequency bands concurrently as long as the frequency conversion schemes are carefully designed. Measured results show that the 3-dB RF bandwidth of the MMW hybrid mixer ranges from 16 to 35 GHz for the FM mode and 30 to 53 GHz for the SHM mode, respectively.

The design of a subharmonic downconverter for 94-GHz imaging arrays in SiGe:C technology is presented. A three-stage differential low-noise amplifier (LNA) with lumped matching networks is used together with a subharmonic mixer driven by a single-pole local-oscillator poly-phase network to form the front-end. The LNA yields 15 dB gain at 94 GHz, while the mixer provides 5 dB conversion gain over a 10 GHz IF bandwidth. The integrated downconverter provides 20 dB conversion gain at 94 GHz with an input 1-dB compression point of −31 dBm and has a current consumption of 45 mA at a 3.3 V supply voltage. The total required die area of the complete downconverter (excluding pad frame) is 0.1 mm, thus making it particularly suitable as a front-end in multi-channel receiver systems.