Mixers

RF Mixers from Pasternack and RF Lambda

A Frequency Mixer is a 3-port electronic circuit that uses a diode network. It converts RF to a lower IF (or baseband signal) for easy signal processing in receivers. And it converts IF frequency (or baseband signal) to a higher IF or RF frequency for efficient transmission in transmitters. Two of the ports are input ports and the other port is an output port. The ideal Mixer mixes the 2 input signals such that the output signal frequency is either the sum (or difference frequency) of the inputs.

Double & Triple Balanced Mixer differences:

Double Balanced Mixer:
- Uses 1 diode ring quad
- Cannot support overlapping IF
- IF goes down to DC
- High Isolation
- Yield best Spurious Suppression
- Desirable for lower cost applications where there is no requirement for overlapping RF and IF
- DC coupled IF makes it a prime building block for phase detection

Triple Balanced Mixer:
- Uses 2 diode ring quads
- Extended IF bandwidth into the RF and LO band
- Overlapping frequencies at all 3 ports
- IF does not go down to DC
- Desirable to translate large bandwidth segments from one frequency range to another with low intermodulation distortion
- High IF-RF & IF-LO Isolations make the conversion loss flatness much less dependent on IF frequency mismatches

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