A 2.4 GHz CMOS up-conversion mixer using novel current mirrors based on chartered 0.18 μm RF CMOS technology for 2.4 GHz wireless sensor network (WSN) application is presented in this paper. The current-reuse current-mirror and current-bleeding technique are used in the driver and switching stages of the mixer, respectively. The post-layout simulation results demonstrate that the novel up-conversion mixer can provide about 10.5 dB conversion gain with a local oscillator (LO) power of 0 dBm, while the power consumption is only 0.25 mW with 1 V supply voltage, and the 1 dB compression point and input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of the mixer are 10.32 dBm and 2.66 dBm, respectively. The chip area including test pads is only 0.5 × 0.6 mm2. Comparing with the previously reported mixers, the proposed mixer has the advantages of lower supply voltage, lower power consumption, higher linearity and smaller chip area than most of the other reported works

Keywords: CMOS, Radio frequency, Wireless sensor network (WSN), Mixer, Current-reuse current-mirror, Low voltage, Low power