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Design and Analysis of a Reconfigurable Gilbert Mixer for Software-Defined Radios
Shilpa Mehta1, Xue-Jun Li1, Massimo Donelli2
1Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand.
Sensors (Basel, Switzerland)
|April 30, 2021
Summary
This study presents a novel reconfigurable downconversion mixer for software-defined radio, achieving superior performance. The design enhances conversion gain, noise figure, and image rejection across a wide frequency range.
Area of Science:
- Electrical Engineering
- Radio Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuits
Background:
- Software-defined radio (SDR) systems require efficient and reconfigurable downconversion mixers.
- Existing mixers often face trade-offs between conversion gain, noise figure, and image rejection.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a reconfigurable gm-boosted, image-rejected downconversion mixer.
- To improve key performance metrics such as conversion gain (CG), noise figure (NF), and image-rejection ratio (IRR).
Main Methods:
- Utilized SiGe 8 HP technology for fabrication.
- Implemented a double-balanced Gilbert cell mixer core with I/Q stages for image rejection.
- Incorporated a resistive biased RF section, inductively peaked gm-boosting, and a tunable filter section.
Main Results:
- Achieved operation across the 0.9-13.5 GHz frequency band.
- Demonstrated excellent conversion gain (CG) of 22 dB and a noise figure (NF) of 2.5 dB.
- Attained a high image-rejection ratio (IRR) of 30.2 dB at the maximum frequency and return loss |S11| < -10 dB.
Conclusions:
- The proposed mixer offers enhanced performance suitable for SDR applications.
- The design successfully addresses limitations of previous mixer architectures.
- Moderate linearity performance was observed with IP3 of -3.28 dBm and CP1 of -13 dBm.
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