Design of a Novel 2-50 GHz Low Power Gilbert Cell Down-Conversion Mixer for Spin Wave Readout Circuitry in 40-nm CMOS Technology

Spin wave (SW) devices are considered as one of the promising candidates for ultra-low power computing and could outperform CMOS in some applications. Naturally SWs propagate at high frequencies that makes their characterization difficult. This paper presents design topologies and simulation results of an ultra-wideband (UWB) Gilbert cell down-conversion mixer operating in the frequency range 2 --- 50GHz. The mixer is a part of an on-chip oscilloscope (OCO) for SW characterization. It has a conversion gain (CG) of 12.5 \$\textbackslashpm\$ 1.5dB and a noise figure (NF) of less than 11:8dB over the whole UWB. The mixer operates at supply voltage of 1:1V and shows a port-to-port isolation lower than \$\textbackslashpm\$ 56dB. 40-nm LP-RF technology is used for the simulations. To the authors' best knowledge, the proposed CMOS Gilbert cell mixer shows for the first time achieved NF and CG in 2 ---50GHz range at a power consumption of 3.94mW to date.     «

Spin wave (SW) devices are considered as one of the promising candidates for ultra-low power computing and could outperform CMOS in some applications. Naturally SWs propagate at high frequencies that makes their characterization difficult. This paper presents design topologies and simulation results of an ultra-wideband (UWB) Gilbert cell down-conversion mixer operating in the frequency range 2 --- 50GHz. The mixer is a part of an on-chip oscilloscope (OCO) for SW characterization. It has a conv...     »