This letter demonstrates two distributed down-converter monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). MMIC1 contains a distributed down-conversion mixer and MMIC2 expands MMIC1 by an eight-cell distributed local oscillator (LO) driver amplifier. The letter includes an investigation of the optimal gate width for each of the transistors in the stack of the source-feedback mixer cells. The MMICs are fabricated in the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics (IAF), Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, 35-nm gate-length metamorphic high-electron-mobility transistor technology. MMIC2 achieves a conversion gain (CG) of better than −4.2 dB over a 1–170 GHz radio frequency (RF) bandwidth (BW) at a fixed intermediate frequency (IF) of 0.1 GHz. The LO power ( PLO{P}_{\text {LO}} ) of MMIC2 is only −1 dBm. Furthermore, the mixer has a variable gain feature. By adjusting PLO{P}_{\text {LO}} , the CG can be controlled without affecting the RF-input-power-related 1-dB CG compression of −1.7 dBm. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work demonstrates the largest BW for distributed down-conversion mixers and for distributed mixers (DMs) with a sliding LO.

中文翻译：

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采用 35 nm 栅长 InGaAs mHEMT 技术的 1'170 GHz 分布式下变频器 MMIC


这封信演示了两个分布式下变频器单片微波集成电路 (MMIC)。 MMIC1 包含一个分布式下变频混频器，MMIC2 通过一个八单元分布式本振 (LO) 驱动放大器扩展了 MMIC1。这封信包括对源反馈混频器单元堆栈中每个晶体管的最佳栅极宽度的研究。 MMIC 是在德国弗莱堡弗劳恩霍夫应用固体物理研究所 (IAF) 中采用 35 纳米栅极长度变质高电子迁移率晶体管技术制造的。 MMIC2 在 1–170 GHz 射频 (RF) 带宽 (BW) 和 0.1 GHz 固定中频 (IF) 上实现了优于 -4.2 dB 的转换增益 (CG)。 MMIC2 的 LO 功率 ( PLO{P}_{\text {LO}} ) 仅 -1 dBm。此外，混频器具有可变增益功能。通过调整 PLO{P}_{\text {LO}} ，可以在不影响 -1.7 dBm 的 RF 输入功率相关 1-dB CG 压缩的情况下控制 CG。据作者所知，这项工作展示了分布式下变频混频器和具有滑动本振的分布式混频器 (DM) 的最大带宽。