Design of a 2.5 THz Schottky-Diode Fourth-Harmonic Mixer

• Published in: IEEE transactions on terahertz science and technology Vol. 13; no. 6; pp. 580 - 586
• Main Authors: Reck, Theodore J., Durant, Steven, Hesler, Jeffrey L.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01-11-2023; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Amplifiers; Cubesat; Gallium arsenide; Harmonic analysis; Impedance; Mixers; Noise temperature; Power harmonic filters; Radiometers; Remote sensing; Schottky diodes; Temperature measurement
• ISSN: 2156-342X; 2156-3446
• DOI: 10.1109/TTHZ.2023.3307566

A 2.5 THz fourth harmonic mixer using an antiparallel gallium arsenide Schottky diode pair is demonstrated. Full-wave simulation is utilized to model the diode's parasitics, study loop resonance of the antiparallel diode pair and manage the power down-converted at the second harmonic of the local ocillator (LO). Y-factor measurements result in a mixer noise temperature of 55 000 K at 2.5 THz with a conversion loss of 26 dB. Finally, a compact LO system is developed to drive this mixer that only consumes 6.9 W of dc-power, resulting in a CubeSat compatible system with a receiver temperature of 64 000 K.