To effectively reduce the requirement of Local Oscillator (LO) power, this paper presents the design and measurement of a biased sub-harmonic mixer working at the center frequency of 0.67 THz in hybrid integration. Two discrete Schottky diodes were placed across the LO waveguide in anti-series configuration on a 50 μm thick quartz-glass substrate, and chip capacitors were not required. At the driven of 3 mW@335 GHz and 0.35 V, the mixer had a minimum measured Signal Side-Band (SSB) conversion loss of 15.3 dB at the frequency of 667 GHz. The typical conversion loss is 18.2 dB in the band of 650 GHz to 690 GHz.
This paper proposes a novel sub-harmonic mixing topology. Based on the proposed topology and the precise three-dimensional electromagnetic model of the Schottky barrier diode; a novel 183 GHz solid-state sub-harmonic mixer is designed and measured. By adding a compact low-pass filter near the ground of the mixer’s circuit, the effect on the mixer’s RF performance of the random error of the conductive adhesive in assembling is effectively decreased. The test results show that the optimal single-sideband conversion loss of the mixer is 8.1dB@183GHz when the local oscillator signal is 4mw@91GHz. In the RF bandwidth from 173 GHz to 191 GHz, the single-sideband conversion loss is less than −10.6 dB. At the same time, the RF port return loss is less than 9.8 dB.