Jl. Hesler et al., FIXED-TUNED SUBMILLIMETER WAVELENGTH WAVE-GUIDE MIXERS USING PLANAR SCHOTTKY-BARRIER DIODES, IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques, 45(5), 1997, pp. 653-658
The design, construction, and evaluation of fixed-tuned submillimeter
wavelength waveguide mixers using planar Schottky diodes are presented
in this paper. Electromagnetic fields within the planar diode package
were analyzed using the finite-element method (FEM). Mixers using the
University of Virginia SC1T5 planar diode were designed at both 585 a
nd 690 GHz. A double sideband (DSB) system noise temperature of 2380 K
was measured at 585 GHz using 1.16 mW of local oscillator (LO) power,
and a system noise temperature of 2970 K DSB was measured at 690 GHz
using 1.04 mW of LO power. In addition, the 585 GHz mixer was cooled t
o both 77 K and 4.2 K, with measured system noise temperatures of 1240
and 880-K DSB using LO powers of 0.47 and 0.14 mW, respectively. The
modeling techniques were found to predict the measured conversion loss
to within 1 dB. The performance of planar diode mixers is now within
a factor of 1.5 of the best whisker-contacted Schottky diode mixers in
this frequency range.