Silicon on Insulator MESFETs for RF Amplifiers.
CMOS compatible, high voltage SOI MESFETs have been fabricated using a standard 3.3V CMOS process without any changes to the process flow. A 0.6μm gate length device operates with a cut-off frequency of 7.3GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency of 21GHz. There is no degradation in device performance up to its breakdown voltage, which greatly exceeds that of CMOS devices on the same process. Other figures of merit of relevance to RF front-end design are presented, including the maximum stable gain and noise figure. An accurate representation of the device in SPICE has been developed using the commercially available TOM3 model. Using the SOI MESFET model, a source degenerated low noise RF amplifier targeting operation near 1GHz has been designed. The amplifier was fabricated on a PCB board and operates at 940MHz with a minimum NF of 3.8dB and RF gain of 9.9dB while only consuming 5mW of DC power.
Wilk
Seth J
SJ
Arizona State University, Center for Solid State Electronics Research, Tempe, AZ 85287.
Balijepalli
Asha
A
Ervin
Joseph
J
Lepkowski
William
W
Thornton
Trevor J
TJ