A 100-element Schottky diode grid mixer

The authors present a 100-element planar grid mixer consisting of Schottky beam-lead diodes placed in bow-tie shaped unit cells. Preliminary results show that the reflection coefficient of this grid agrees well with theory. A grid conversion loss of 9.3 dB at 10 GHz has been measured. This grid of Schottky diodes is suitable for use as a quasi-optically coupled mixer. The mixer grid is attractive for millimeter-wave applications because of its low-loss quasi-optical coupling, and because its dynamic range can be increased by a factor of the number of devices in the grid. This is important for SIS (superconductor-insulator-superconductor) receivers where dynamic range is fundamentally limited.