A D-Band Low-Noise and High-Gain Receiver Front-End Adopting G_max -Driven Active Mixer

Phased-array systems operating above 100 GHz require high-gain and low-noise receiver (RX) front-ends (FEs) with minimal power consumption to address severe path loss and support large-scale integration. This paper presents a 154 GHz low-power CMOS RX FE incorporating a proposed active mixer driven by a g_m -stage based on a Gmax-core. A two-stage low-noise amplifier (LNA) using G_max-based gain boosting ensures both high gain and low noise, where the first stage is optimized for achieving simultaneous noise and input matching. The active mixer features the G_max-based g_m -stage followed by switching stages, with a conjugate matching network inserted in between to further enhance conversion gain. Implemented in a 65-nm CMOS process, the RX FE achieves a peak conversion gain of 28.5 dB and a minimum noise figure of 7.5 dB, while consuming only 21.8 mW of dc power.