Low-voltage CMOS Folded-cascode Mixer

The folded-cascode structure is used to realize the low-voltage low-power consumption mixer, whose performance parameters have big influence on the navigation radio receiver's performance. Adopting the folded-cascode structure, the folded-cascode mixer (FCM) has a lower power supply voltage of 1.2 V and realizes the design trade-offs among the high transconductance, high linearity and low noise. The difficulties of realizing the trade-offs between the linearity and noise performance, the linearity and conversion gain, the conversion gain and noise performance are reduced. Fabricated in an radio frequency (RF) 0.18 μm CMOS process, the FCM has an active area of about 200 μm ×150 μm and consumes approximate 3.9 mW. The test results show that the FCM features a conversion gain (Gc) of some 14.5 dB, an input 1 dB compression point (Pin-1dB) of almost -13 dBm and a dual sideband (DSB) noise figure of around 12 dB. The FCM can be applied to the navigation radio receivers and electronic systems for aviation and aerospace or other related fields.