Rt. Syme, TUNNELING DEVICES AS MICROWAVE MIXERS AND DETECTORS, Philosophical transactions-Royal Society of London. Physical sciences and engineering, 354(1717), 1996, pp. 2351-2364
Semiconductor tunnel devices can be used as mixers or detectors of mic
rowaves and two examples are given in this paper. First, single-barrie
r tunnel detector diodes are described and their performance is compar
ed with conventional devices at frequencies up to 35 GHz. Second, the
predicted and measured performance of resonant tunnelling diodes as mi
xers at 94 GHz are discussed. Such mixer diodes can exhibit conversion
gain but it is shown that their noise figures are, in general, worse
than conventional devices. Some conclusions are drawn regarding the li
kely applications of both kinds of device.