A 35–50 GHz triple cascode mixer module with intermediate frequency of 4–12 GHz based on low noise GaAs PHEMT process

A 35–50 GHz mixer module for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) band-1 receiver is presented in this paper. By using triple cascode structure and modified dc bias technique, a mixer with wide intermediate frequency (IF) bandwidth (4–12 GHz), low LO driven power, and high LO-RF isolation is achieved. The chip is further packaged into a module. At LO frequency of 31 GHz, the mixer module exhibits a conversion gain better than −8 dB with gain variation less than 3 dB and input 1-dB gain compression point higher than −10 dBm over the IF bandwidth.