A 453-μ W 53-70-GHz ultra-low-power double-balanced source-driven mixer using 90-nm CMOS technology

An ultra-low-power consumption and ultra-low local oscillator (LO) power double-balanced down-conversion mixer using standard 90-nm CMOS technology is presented in this paper. By employing a weak inversion biasing technique in a source-driven topology, the proposed V-band mixer can operate at microwatt power consumption of 453 μW and has an ultra low LO power of-6 dBm. In addition, under 1.2-V standard supply voltage, the down-conversion mixer exhibits excellent conversion-gain flatness of 5.9 \±1.5 dB and the measured LO-to-RF isolation is more than 37 dB from 53 to 70 GHz, and OP_{1 dB} of-9.2 dBm at RF frequency of 60 GHz. Based on aforementioned results, the presented monolithic microwave integrated circuit can mitigate power-hungry issues while providing reasonable RF performance, which is important for a low-power communication system.