Dual-Gate MOSFET, and its Application in Designing Mixers

Mohammad Khodaei, Report #2 Abstract-A dual-gate FET is an n-channel depletion type FET (commonly a GaAs MESFET) with two independently insulated gate terminals. MESFETs operate essentially like a MOSFET, but can be used at very high frequencies, in the order of several GHz. These FETs have a series arrangement of two separate channels, with each channels having independent gate control. Dualgate MESFETs are used at very high frequencies and are commonly used in mixer, modulator, and Automatic Gain Control (AGC) circuits. In mixer/modulator applications, the LO is applied to Gate 1, and the output taken from the drain (common-source configuration). The baseband signal is applied to Gate 2 to modulate the LO signal. A dual-gate n-channel depletion MESFET mixer makes use of the isolated gates for good isolation between the LO and the baseband is shown in Figure 3. The IF output is transformer coupled for impedance matching and isolation. I. INTRODUCTION & STRUCTURE

Figure 1: Cross section of a generic planar DGFET

There are three possible topologies in order of fabricating DGFETs, but only one of them is practical. It is because of limitation in fabrication of device in such small scales, which requires chip making techniques. Fig.2 depicts different topologies in fabricating.

The consumer demand for low-cost highquality mobile communications services has resulted in continued growth for the telecommunications industry. While most of the high frequency signal processing requiring active devices is done with either bipolar or MESFET technologies, most digital signal processing is done with the significantly less expensive, low power MOS technology. Significant cost savings may result if the radio system, from transmission / reception to data processing, could be completely integrated onto one chip in one technology. Although a single chip design is economically attractive and has been the focus of much research, there are still serious technological hurdles to overcome before it becomes a reality
MIGFET devices have multiple gates to independently control the channel region. This allows for new device architectures and applications. Double gate devices offer excellent short channel control and have been proposed to replace the planar MOSFET.i

Figure 2: Three possible realizations of DGFETs

II. APPLICATION AS A MIXERii To find output due to inputs lets consider 3 signals as follow: Assuming that the input signal is sufficiently small so that harmonics of the RF signal are negligible, the output current caused by the RF waveform, after simplification, is

in which LO and RF are input signals, while IF indicates output signal. The goal is to find out an equation that relates IF to circuit inputs. A memoryless, monotonic, nonlinear function of one variable can be described using a power seriesiii. For a DGFET mixer, the steadystate output drain current caused by the LO waveform can be expressed as:

Differentiating the original steady-state current (4) and substituting the result into (8) results in

which describes the effect of nonreactive nonlinearities in the circuit caused by the LO and implicitly includes the LO frequency, amplitude, and bias information. If a very small RF signal is added to the original circuit, its effect on the circuit can be described as a small variation or perturbation away from the steady state. The resulting perturbed output current can be described by

From (10), the output current caused by the RF signal can be seen as the first derivative of the LO induced steady state output drain current multiplied by the RF input signal. This derivative is considered the conversion transconducance, which, with the output load impedance, results in the conversion gain (11).

Now we have obtained a linear relation between Vrf and Vif, which makes our equations applicable for designing mixers based on it. The output current caused by the RF signal can be isolated if the steady state current (4) is subtracted from the perturbed current (5), resulting in
References D. Hisamoto et al IEDM 1998 p 1032, 1998 ii A. J. Bergsma and B. A. Syrett, A Comprehensive Design Method for Dual-Gate MOSFET Mixers, 2000 iii JOHN TSIMBINOS, B.Eng., IDENTIFICATION AND COMPENSATION OF NONLINEAR DISTORTION
i

or, after expanding and simplifying, in