Low‐IF noise characteristics of W‐band resistive and diode mixers

In this letter, W-band mixers (resistive and diode mixers) are designed using a 0.15 μm GaAs pseudo-morphic high electron mobility transistor process for frequency-modulated continuous wave radars. The measurement shows that both mixers can achieve a good conversion gain of −9 dB with high linearity performance. In addition, noise figures (NFs) of both mixers are measured especially at low intermediate frequency (IF) using a gain method. The resistive mixer exhibits 10.3–11.2 dB lower NF than the diode mixer at low IF from 100 kHz to 1 MHz. This result is also supported by the measurement of the flicker noise of HEMT and diode at each operating bias condition. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 59:275–278, 2017