E-plane W-band printed-circuit balanced mixer

The development of a W-band mixer that integrates a low-loss printed-probe hybrid with fin-line diode mounts on a single substrate is reported. The E-plane approach followed here offers production economy, effective shielding, high (more than 400) unloaded Q, light dielectric loading, and simple waveguide interfaces. It is noted that with the LO fixed at 95 GHz, the measured conversion loss of the mixer is 7.8 + or - 0.7 dB across the RF band of 92-98 GHz. The bandwidth can be increased if necessary by adding probes to the hybrid or by substituting another type of E-plane hybrid. The housing in the demonstration model described here can be greatly simplified by eliminating three of the four waveguide bends.