A Dual-Gate Downconverter for H-Band Employing an Active Load

A single-ended active dual-gate zero-IF frequency downconverter for H-band applications is presented. The mixer is designed for a 240 GHz LO frequency and shows a flat conversion gain curve of -7dB over a 3-dB bandwidth of more than 50 GHz from 220 to 270 GHz at a low LO power of -2dBm. To reduce the DC power consumption an active load was integrated. The MMIC was realized in a 35 nm gate-length InGaAs-based metamorphic HEMT technology.