A 71–86GHz multi-tanh up-conversion mixer achieving +1dBm OP1dB in 0.13 μm SiGe technology (original) (raw)

This paper investigates on simulation level three techniques, the multi-tanh tech-nique, resistive, and inductive emitter degeneration, to improve the linearity of double-balanced Gilbert-Cell mixers and proposes a mixer-design with inductive degeneration. Using this tech-nique the highest dynamic range is obtained at the expense of a slightly degenerated noise figure and an increased compression point. The developed direct-down-conversion mixer is fabricated in a SiGe:C bipolar production technology with an f T of 170 GHz and f max of 250 GHz. The mixer achieves a 1 dB-input-referred compression point of −1.2 dBm with a low current consumption of 13 mA from a 5 V supply. The noise figure is approximately 12 dB in a wide frequency band around 80 GHz.

We present a fully operational 77 GHz SiGe mixer assembled in a chip-scale embedded wafer level BGA (eWLB) package. This innovative package has a footprint with a standard pad pitch of 0.5 mm and a standard package height of 0.4 mm. The results demonstrate an excellent potential of the eWLB package concept for mm-wave applications. The measured gain of the