A TERM PAPER ON MICROWAVE FET MODELING, 24, JUNE 2011

Term-paper Leading to Large-Signal FET Modeling

Submitted By Debjoy Mukherjee(Roll No.001010702004), ME in Microwave Engineering,Jadavpur University
Guided By Prof. D.R.Poddar, Jadavpur University and Prof. Arijit Majumdar, SAMEER Kolkata AbstractThe demand for accurate transistor models for RF and microwave circuit design has increased as a result of the more stringent requirements that are placed upon power amplifier and transmitter designs by the customers and regulating agencies. Modern power amplifiers for communications systems are tightly specified in terms of the required linearity performance, multichannel capability, bandwidth, and so forth. At the same time, there is a quest for higher-efficiency operation, to be realized perhaps by inherently nonlinear modes of operation, such as Class D, E, F, and others. The combination of high powers and high frequencies in RF and microwave power amplifiers brings together a unique set of challenges for the modeling engineer. The transistors themselves are physically large, and may be a significant fraction of a wavelength, even at microwave frequencies, for power transistors; the electrical behaviour in this distributed environment must be captured in the model. Even with the trend towards higher efficiency modes of operation, the device will generate a lot of heat, which must be dissipated effectively; the thermal effects on the transistors electrical behaviour need to be characterized and modeled accurately to enable high-power designs. My goal is to produce compact models of the power FETs that can be used in the RF circuit simulator. The compact models will be designed to preserve the dynamics of the transistor, while being simple to develop and extract. I shall adopt a technology-independent approach to creating the compact model, based on observations of the transistors electrical behaviour: the models will be derived directly from electrical and thermal measurements, and so careful characterization is necessary. I shall address the thermal effects on the device, scaling issues, nonlinear modeling of the active transistor, and the modeling of the internal package and matching networks. Index TermsRF and Microwave Power FE Transistors, Various Modeling Approach, Measurement-Based Equivalent Circuit Models, Behavioural Models, Thermal Effects.

many measurement, analysis, and model synthesis techniques that can be more widely applied to FET modeling in general.
In building the transistor model, I should bear in mind the following Laws of Simulation and Modeling: (i) A simulation is only as accurate as the models it is based on; (ii) A model is (mostly) useless unless it is embedded in a simulator; (iii) Models are, by definition, inaccurate; its just a matter of degree; (iv) Models generally trade off complexity (simulation time) for accuracy. II. The Basics of FET Operation The field effect transistor is a charge-controlled device. By this I mean that by applying a voltage to the control terminal the gate I can control the amount of charge in the region of the semiconductor beneath the gate. This region is confined laterally and vertically by the structure of the transistor, so the charge is effectively confined to a channel that connects the drain and source terminals. By controlling the amount of charge in the channel, I can control the flow of current between the source and drain terminals. Thus, the input voltage controls the output current; this is also known as a transconductance device:

Idrain Vgate = gmVgate ,where the parameter gm is

the transconductance. The subscript m remains as a legacy of the old-fashioned term, mutual conductance. I shall investigate this charge control mechanism, as it applies to the various field effect transistor devices that are used for power transistors, to determine the drain current. III. Outline of the Transistor Modeling Process A clear and complete definition of the scope and deliverables of a project should be received before moving into the execution phase; this is fundamental to project management methodology. The time taken to investigate and document the model specifications is

I. INTRODUCTION

The focus of this Paper is primarily on the highpower FET, as this is the current market-leading technology, I shall develop, describe, and apply

Submitted By Debjoy Mukherjee, ME in Microwave Engineering,Jadavpur University Guided By Prof. D.R.Poddar, Jadavpur University and Prof. Arijit Majumdar, SAMEER Kolkata

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A TERM PAPER ON MICROWAVE FET MODELING, 24, JUNE 2011

well invested, as it forces the modeling engineer and the customer to agree upon a set of objectives and validation criteria for the model. A flow chart illustrating the distinct processes required to generate a model:

The accuracy with which any model can achieve this depends on the level of abstraction of the model in the first place.

Finally, I shall study memory effects. This term has become popular recently as a means of describing well known electrical phenomena such as frequency response and hysteresis, as well as nonlinear effects such as intermodulation distortions that appear out-of-band. This latter can be a particular problem for power amplifiers: even-order distortion mechanisms generate products at the baseband frequency. This low frequency energy can affect the DC bias of the transistor observed as self-biasing and alter the gain and other properties of the transistor and amplifier. As this happens at a timescale that is much longer than the RF period, the term memory is coined to describe it. Clearly, this is a real physical phenomenon that must be captured in a successful model of a power transistor.

Transistor Semiconducto r Equation

Compact Model

Circuits

Behavioural Model

System DSP

Fig 1.A general modeling hierarchy that I may apply to the level of abstraction of the design. V. Physical Modeling The physics of operation of a given transistor are best described using a physical model simulation, in which the geometry, topography, and the material properties of the semiconductors, metals, and insulators that form the transistor are captured in the model description in the simulator. In physical modeling, the nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) that describe charge distribution, charge transport, current continuity, and so forth, in the transistor structure are solved in the simulator. As the transistor geometries become smaller, quantum-mechanical (QM) effects also need to be incorporated into this solution. In the simulation, the transistor geometry is discretized in two or three

IV. Compact Modeling of High-Power FETs

My aim is to build models for the transistors that can be used in circuit simulators for the design of power amplifiers and power amplifier integrated circuits. These models are known as compact models. To achieve this objective, the models must be able to reproduce with acceptable fidelity the measured electrical and thermal properties of the transistors, and to simulate them quickly, with robust convergence. Another common modeling objective is to be able to inform the physical device design: in other words indicate which of the material and structural properties of a given transistor affect its electrical performance.

Submitted By Debjoy Mukherjee, ME in Microwave Engineering,Jadavpur University Guided By Prof. D.R.Poddar, Jadavpur University and Prof. Arijit Majumdar, SAMEER Kolkata

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A TERM PAPER ON MICROWAVE FET MODELING, 24, JUNE 2011

dimensions, and the solution of the PDEs and QM equations is performed for each cell or node in the structure. This requires complex solution techniques to be used, such as finite-difference and finiteelement methods. These numerical methods are also found in commercial software for physical transistor modeling. VI. Compact Models While physical modeling provides a viable route for detailed device design and technology development and optimization, it is generally impractical for circuit design. Aside from the computational overhead involved, it is usually expected that the transistor or integrated circuit (IC) process has been determined (frozen) by the time circuit design begins, and therefore I can devise a more appropriate model that can be used in the circuit simulator for the design of the IC or discrete transistor product. Such models generally fall under the rubric compact. In fact, in many new device technology developments, compact models can be created from the physical model simulations, and hence the circuit or IC design can begin well before the process is finally frozen. The compact models can be updated as the technology develops, so that the circuit design is always in step with the latest technology improvements. VII. Measurement-Based Equivalent Circuit Models Generally, compact models are equivalent circuit representations of the transistor. The electrical measurements that are performed during the characterization of the transistor can be mapped directly onto a network of circuit components to mimic this electrical behaviour. The values of the equivalent circuit parameters are extracted directly from the DC IV and S-parameter measurements. For example, at a given DC bias point and RF frequency, I can measure the S-parameters, which can then be readily converted into generalized twoport Y-parameters using standard conversion relationships. After de-embedding the extrinsic

components, this yields an equivalent circuit containing conductance and susceptance components that can be readily incorporated into the circuit simulator. An example is shown in Fig. 2, where the admittance elements in the gate-source and gate-drain branches were transformed into series RC networks. The values of the equivalent circuit components should, generally speaking, be independent of frequency. This approach works may well for small-signal models; the extraction of the equivalent circuit parameter values can be carried out over a range of bias voltages (Vgs, Vds), and the values can be stored in a table indexed by the bias, using interpolation to find the required component values for the given bias voltages, to produce a biasdependent linear transistor model. The equivalent circuit parameter values can be fitted with parameterized functions of the bias voltages, and the model extraction consists of finding these function parameters for each of the circuit elements in the model Large-signal models can also be implemented in the simulator using equivalent circuit components, but now the component parameter values are dependent on the large-signal voltages. The example circuit topology shown in Fig.3 is an electro-thermal model.

Fig 2. Small-signal equivalent circuit model of the intrinsic transistor; this model is derived from Yparameters, with some admittance-to-impedance transformation in the gate-source and gate-drain branches.

For a compact model that can be used for small- and large-signal applications, the functional dependences of the equivalent circuit parameter

Submitted By Debjoy Mukherjee, ME in Microwave Engineering,Jadavpur University Guided By Prof. D.R.Poddar, Jadavpur University and Prof. Arijit Majumdar, SAMEER Kolkata

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A TERM PAPER ON MICROWAVE FET MODELING, 24, JUNE 2011

values on the instantaneous terminal voltages are required. I cannot simply use the DC bias voltages as indices and expect the dynamic behaviour of the transistor to be predicted correctly. The small-signal model is a representation of the first moment of the Taylor series expansion of the terminal admittances about the DC bias point, that is, the slopes defined by the infinitesimal voltage swings around the quiescent condition. In the large signal model, I need to include the responses to large excursions of the terminal voltages. This can be done by integrating the voltage-dependent admittances over the voltage space, subject to some fundamental physical constraints. I can then apply mathematical function fitting techniques to these derived large-signal equivalent circuit parameters, to obtain a nonlinear functional description for the large-signal model. An example of this mathematical function-fitting approach is the description of the FET IdVds characteristics using a hyperbolic tangent (tanh(x)) curve. The hyperbolic tangent itself has no physical meaning in the context of FET operation, but describes the basic shape of the curve from quasi-linear through saturation regions reasonably well. This function is used in several examples of FET compact models and is generally modified with other parameters to describe the harpness of the knee region, output conductance, and so forth.

Fig 4.An example of a large-signal equivalent circuit (compact) model VIII. Behavioural Models As noted in the introduction, and illustrated in Fig. 1, I shall tend to reserve the label behavioural model for those modeling approaches that use a mathematical function or mapping to relate the measured output to input data. Behavioural models are generally used at higher levels of abstraction in the overall circuit or system design. I have also noted that I often use curvefitting of the voltage dependences for some of the elements in the equivalent circuit models, rather than try and estimate the true physical relationship. Although this appears to be a behavioural approach, I prefer to categorize these models as compact models. IX. My Modeling Approach I shall focus on creating compact models of RF power transistors. These models will be designed to preserve the dynamics of the transistor, while being simple to develop and extract. I shall adopt a two-port structure to describe the intrinsic part of the transistor under largesignal conditions, as shown in Fig. 3. The model consists of controlled current and charge sources that are each dependent on the instantaneous voltages Vgs and Vds applied to the transistor (intrinsic) terminals. These current and charge source functions are determined from pulsed bias-dependent S-parameter measurements. The data is transformed, preserving the device dynamics, and is then fitted in the two-dimensional VgsVds space using appropriate mathematical functions. The model

Fig. 3. Simple two-port representation that we adopt for the large-signal FET model.

Submitted By Debjoy Mukherjee, ME in Microwave Engineering,Jadavpur University Guided By Prof. D.R.Poddar, Jadavpur University and Prof. Arijit Majumdar, SAMEER Kolkata

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A TERM PAPER ON MICROWAVE FET MODELING, 24, JUNE 2011

structure will preserve small-signal to large-signal consistency.

XI. Conclusions In this Paper I have presented some of the background and framework of transistor modeling. The models that I shall build will be compact models, consisting of mathematical functions that describe the dependences of the charges and currents in the transistor on its intrinsic terminals. I shall embed that compact intrinsic model in the manifolds, bondwire arrays and package to obtain a model of the packaged transistor that can be used in circuit simulation. I can accommodate effects such as long-term and short-term memory by accurate modeling of the electro-thermal and charge trapping behaviour.
References [1] Peter. H .AAEN, Modeling and characteristics of RF & MW Power FET , [2] Tianjum Gao, RF & MW Modeling & Measurement [3] Raymond S. Pengally, MW FET : Theory design & Application

X. Thermal Effects Under conditions of constant drive, the transistor channel heats up uniformly in cross-section. When driven using a modulated information signal, I may find that at some instant the signal is high amplitude, and hence high energy: the transistor channel heats up a little in response to this signal. A short time later, the signal has returned to a low value, but the channel has not cooled down instantaneously: it is still at a slightly higher temperature. Because of this local change in temperature, some of the transistors parameters will be slightly different; for instance, the gain may be slightly reduced from the equilibriumtemperature value. This later signal will see the reduced gain, and therefore the output from the transistor will be slightly reduced from the expected equilibrium-gain value. The transistor parameters are exhibiting a memory of the previous signal. The time constants associated with thermal transients are generally of the order of milliseconds to microseconds. This timescale is significantly longer than the RF period, and is closer to the timescale of the information signal in the envelope: RF information channel bandwidths are in the range 200 kHz to 20 MHz and beyond. These long-term memory effects can be seen in the AM-to-AM characteristics of RF power amplifiers. The thermal memory effects can be included in the transistor model through a dynamic coupling of the electrical and thermal signals.

Submitted By Debjoy Mukherjee, ME in Microwave Engineering,Jadavpur University Guided By Prof. D.R.Poddar, Jadavpur University and Prof. Arijit Majumdar, SAMEER Kolkata

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