Re: Subharmonic Mixer
To toonafishy,
Yes, usage of S-parameters for mixer measurement and analyzes is not easy task. But it is possible. May be not for any case, but at least for some of them. By the way, I afraid that some of EDAboard members will fight to this opinion, but this is the true that linear mixer is possible. I mean mixer that made from linear (from RF point of view) elements. I invented such circuits, built them, tested and used a lot. They performed excellent, but I am sure many of university professors will bite me immediately. The beauty of these mixers is that they provide very high quality mixing and for some of them no LO currents practically flow through the mixer. These circuits may be considered as a kind of subharmonic when IF is not equal to n*RF+/-m*LO and they may be well described with standard S3P files. Therefore at least for some cases it is possible to use S-parameters file for mixer analyzes.