High Performance MMIC Star Mixer for Millimeter-wave Applications

In this paper, we reported on a high performance MMIC star mixer for millimeter-wave applications. The star mixer was fabricated using drain-source-connected pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (PHEMT) diodes considering the PHEMT MMIC full process on 2 mil thick GaAs substrate. The average conversion loss of 13 dB was measured in the RF frequency range of 81 GHz to 86 GHz at LO frequency of 75 GHz with LO power of 10 dBm. The RF-LO isolation characteristics are greater than 30 dB and the input 1-dB compression are approximately 4 dBm. The total chip size is 0.8 mm 0.8 mm.