CMOS I/Q Subharmonic Mixer for Millimeter-Wave Atmospheric Remote Sensing

A compact second harmonic 180 GHz I/Q balanced resistive mixer is realized in a 32-nm SOI CMOS technology for atmospheric remote sensing applications. The MMIC further includes two on-chip IF amplifiers at the mixer's I and Q channels. A conversion gain of +8 dB is achieved with 74 mW of dc power consumption using a 1.2 V supply. The measured IF frequency range is from 1 to 10 GHz. The mixer achieves a 20 dB imagerejection (IR) ratio with an LO input power of +4 dBm. The chip size is 0.75 mm2 including probing pads.