1999 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

IEEE Microwave and Guided Wave Letters
Volume 9 Number 12, December 1999

The Cause of Conversion Nulls for Single-Diode Harmonic Mixers

Page 532.

Abstract:

Recent experimental measurements have found that for a single-diode harmonic mixer there exists a dc bias level for which the conversion to the IF goes to zero, with reasonable efficiency on either side of this null. This letter shows that these nulls are caused by competition between the different mixing paths through which a signal can be converted from the RF to the IF. A simple small-signal analysis is used to give a clear insight into the mixing behavior behind the nulls.

References

1. R. Titz, "Untersuchung von GaAs-Schottky-Dioden mit Submillimeter-Lasern," dissertation, Univ. Bonn, Germany, 1991.
2. D. W. Porterfield, "Subharmonically pumped mixers at submillimeter wavelengths," M.S. thesis, Univ. Virginia, Charlottesville, 1994.
3. P. H. Siegel and A. R. Kerr, "Computer analysis of microwave and millimeter-wave mixer," IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-28, pp. 275-276, Mar. 1980.
4. H. C. Torrey and C. A. Whitmer, Crystal Rectifiers (M.I.T. Radiation Lab. Series 15).New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948.
5. D. N. Held and A. R. Kerr, "Conversion loss and noise of microwave and millimeter-wave mixers: Part 1--Theory," IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-26, pp. 49-55, Feb. 1978.
6. S. A. Maas, Nonlinear Microwave Circuits.Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1988.