The Analysis and Design of a Dual-Band Self-Oscillating Mixer

Here, a self-oscillating mixer is experimentally demonstrated employing both the fundamental and harmonic signals generated by the oscillator sub-circuit in the mixing process. The resulting circuit is a dual-band down-converting mixer that can operate in the C-band, or in the X-band. The oscillator uses the active super harmonic coupling to enforce the quadrature relationship of the fundamental outputs. Either the fundamental outputs of the oscillator or the second harmonic oscillator output signals present at the common mode nodes are connected to the mixer via a set of complementary switches. The mixer achieves a conversion gain between 9–11.5 dB in both frequency bands. The third-order output intercept-point for the C-band and the X–band operations are 10.42 and 8.33 dBm, respectively. The circuit was designed and simulated in 0.18CMOS technology by ADS2008.