Patent ID: 8913978

Claim:
A multiphase mixer comprising: a rotary traveling wave oscillator configured to generate a rotary traveling wave oscillator signal having a plurality of N number of phases, each phase oscillating at a frequency that is less than a frequency of an incoming radio signal by a factor of N/2, said plurality of phases including a first plurality of phases and a second plurality of phases, said first plurality of phases being sine phases and said second plurality of phases being cosine phases, wherein the rotary travelling wave oscillator comprises: a differential transmission line in a closed loop, the differential transmission line including an odd number of one or more cross-overs configured to reverse the polarity of a wave propagating through the differential transmission line; and a plurality of regenerative devices electrically connected along a path of the differential transmission line; a first mixer circuit having an input configured to receive the incoming radio frequency signal and being coupled to receive the first plurality of phases from the rotary traveling wave oscillator, said first mixer circuit having an output that generates a first down converted signal; and a second mixer circuit having an input configured to receive the incoming radio frequency signal and being coupled to receive the second plurality of phases from the rotary traveling wave oscillator, said second mixer circuit having an output that generates a second down converted signal, wherein the first mixer circuit comprises a first plurality of phase-pair combining circuits, wherein the first plurality of phase-pair combining circuits combines pairs of phases in said plurality of phases with the incoming radio frequency signal to generate a first mixed output, wherein a first phase and a second phase of each pair of phases differ by N/2+1 phase steps.