A fully integrated folded mixer in CMOS 0.35 μm technology for 802.11a WIFI applications

Abstract

In the last years, Wireless market has shown an incredible growth, exceeding expectations. This paper presents a fully integrated folded mixer in a BiCMOS 0.35 μm technology for the 5 GHz band, according to the IEEE 802.11a WIFI standard. To make possible a comparison, two designs are presented: a folded mixer, and a classical Gilbert cell. In both designs all passives devices are on chip, including integrated inductors which have been designed by electromagnetic simulations. This work demonstrates the improvement in gain and linearity of a folded mixer comparing to a classical Gilbert topology, at expense of a little increase in power consumption. This implies that, unlike the Gilbert mixer, in a low voltage application, the folded topology would present still good performance.