A Compact Double-Balanced Star Mixer with Novel Dual 180° Hybrid

A compact double-balanced monolithic star mixer for Ka-band applications using 0.25 μm GaAs pHEMT process is presented. With multi-coupled lines technology, the proposed dual 180° hybrid is produced and applied to a star mixer successfully. The proposed hybrid adopts the power divider and two types of multi-coupled lines to improve the return loss and isolation at the balance outputs of a traditional dual Marchand balun. Output ports are allowed to locate arbitrarily, eliminating a complex layout while the dual 180° hybrid is applied to double balanced star mixers. As the measurement results show, the proposed mixer achieves an operation bandwidth of 27 to 36 GHz with the best conversion loss of 6.3 dB at 28 GHz. In addition, the chip dimension can be manufactured as small as 0.81 mm.