A mixing method and mixer structure provide a circuit topology suitable for use in radio receivers, transmitters, tuners,
instrumentation systems,
telemetry systems, and other systems and devices performing
frequency conversion in either homodyne or
heterodyne implementations. The inventive mixer may be used for
wireless communication devices including radios, cellular telephones, and
telemetry systems whether land, sea, airborne, or space based, and whether fixed or mobile. The mixer provides superior
intermodulation and
harmonic distortion suppression and features excellent conversion loss,
noise figure, port match, and port isolation as a result of its circuit topology. The mixer device circuit combines the advantages of series mixing FETs, a triple balanced design using a balanced passive reflection
transformer, a precise
local oscillator phase splitter, and
square wave gate drive having high
slew rate signal characteristics to achieve high levels of performance. It is power conservative and offers the
advantage of long battery life in portable devices such as portable radios and cellular telephones as it requires only a modest amount of DC and
local oscillator drive power, and is useful for operation over at least a multi-decade bandwidth.