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Abstract

A mixing method and mixer structure provide a circuit topology suitable for use in radio receivers, transmitters, tuners, instrumentation systems, telemetry systems, and other systems and devices performing frequency conversion in either homodyne or heterodyne implementations. The inventive mixer may be used for wireless communication devices including radios, cellular telephones, and telemetry systems whether land, sea, airborne, or space based, and whether fixed or mobile. The mixer provides superior intermodulation and harmonic distortion suppression and features excellent conversion loss, noise figure, port match, and port isolation as a result of its circuit topology. The mixer device circuit combines the advantages of series mixing FETs, a triple balanced design using a balanced passive reflection transformer, a precise local oscillator phase splitter, and square wave gate drive having high slew rate signal characteristics to achieve high levels of performance. It is power conservative and offers the advantage of long battery life in portable devices such as portable radios and cellular telephones as it requires only a modest amount of DC and local oscillator drive power, and is useful for operation over at least a multi-decade bandwidth.

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First Claim