W-band IQ sub-harmonic mixers with low LO power for cryogenic operation in large arrays
Abstract
This paper presents the design and characterization of W-band IQ sub-harmonic MMIC mixers based on the UMS BES Schottky diode process. The mixers were characterized at 300 K and 20 K physical temperature. They are a key component for the compact heterodyne multi-chip modules to be used in the 16-element Argus focal plane array, which will be deployed at the Green Bank Telescope in late 2014. The RF signal is split in quadrature using a Lange coupler, LO is split in-phase using a Wilkinson divider, and an antiparallel diode pair is used for the design of two sub-harmonically pumped mixer cells. The resulting IF outputs from the two cells are I and Q, which can be combined using an off-chip 90 degree hybrid to obtain LSB and USB. Three mixer designs are fabricated using this topology. A conversion loss between 12 to 18 dB is obtained over 80 to 120 GHz of RF for a fixed IF frequency, and over 10 GHz of IF for a fixed LO frequency. These mixers are designed to operate with low LO power without a significant loss in performance.
Additional Information
© 2014 EuMA. The authors would like to thank Dr. Sandy Weinreb at JPL for his valuable insight in the design of the mixers. This work was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research was sponsored in part by NSF grant AST-0905855.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 53624
- DOI
- 10.1109/EuMIC.2014.6997852
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20150113-105845747
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- AST-0905855
- NSF
- Created
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2015-01-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field