500 GHz CMOS heterodyne imager adopting fourth subharmonic passive mixer

Abstract

A 500 GHz heterodyne imager adopting a source-driven fourth subharmonic single balanced resistive mixer is implemented in 65-nm CMOS technology. The adopted passive mixer improves the port-to-port isolation and minimizes the input matching loss. At an LO power of 5 dBm, the imager achieves a conversion loss and double sideband noise figure of 30.2 dB and 51 dB, respectively, which corresponds to -93 dBm and 15.8 fW/Hz(0.5) of sensitivity and the effective noise equivalent power, respectively, assuming a noise bandwidth of 1 kHz. To the best of authors' knowledge, the proposed work is the highest frequency implementation as a CMOS-based heterodyne imagers adopting resistive mixers.