A novel subharmonically pumped resistive mixer (SHPRM) with a chip dimension of 0.8×0.81 mm2 is fabricated through a standard 0.18-μm CMOS process. An impedance-transforming active quasi-circulator is monolithically integrated with an nMOS field-effect transistor (FET) to perform up-converter mixing while simultaneously enhancing all port isolation through a broadband operation. The design analysis of impedance-transforming active quasi-circulator is also presented for matching between circulator and resistive transistor. As shown in the measured results, the mixer exhibits a 9-14.5 dB conversion loss. All port-to-port isolations better than 16.5\,dB over a radio frequency (RF) of 10-20 GHz can be achieved.
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