In conclusion:
•Active mixers with RF and LO gain are vulnerable to noise degradation from out of band sources.
• The measurement of these mixers must emulate the environment that they will be operating in, or proper allowance should be made in the results.
• The measurement of noise figure of an active mixer can be optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the signal and image gains.
• Gilbert Cell mixers are very simple, but are not well suited to low noise and image reject mixer applications due to their sensitivity to downconverted image frequency noise.
Article written by Allen Podell, Vice President of Technology for Besser Associates (www.besserassociates.com) in cooperation with Agilent Technologies.
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