Effect of TID electronradiation on SiGe BiCMOS LNAs at V-band

Minko, Flavien Sagouo; Stander, Tinus

doi:10.1016/j.microrel.2020.113750

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…It is designed to provide impedance matching to the input port for good signal reception and sufficient gain for the subsequent stages, while minimizing noise contributions for better noise performance of the overall receiver system [9,10]. Regarding radiation effects, SiGe LNAs suffer from variations in input and output impedances, a reduction of signal gain, and an increase in noise figure (NF) [11], most of which are attributed to the degradation of active devices such as SiGe HBTs [12,13]. Previous workers have investigated TID effects on LNA performance [14][15][16], but few studies have addressed the relationships between device parameters and circuit performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simple Modeling and Analysis of Total Ionizing Dose Effects on Radio-Frequency Low-Noise Amplifiers

Kim,

Ryu,

Lee

et al. 2024

Electronics

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In this study, the degradation characteristics of radio frequency (RF)-low-noise amplifiers (LNA) due to a total ionizing dose (TID) is investigated. As a device-under-test (DUT), sample LNAs were prepared using silicon–germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) as core elements. The LNA was based on a cascode stage with emitter degeneration for narrowband applications. By using a simplified small-signal model of a SiGe HBT, design equations such as gain, impedance matching, and noise figure (NF) were derived for analyzing TID-induced degradations in the circuit-level performance. To study radiation effects in circuits, the SiGe-RF-LNAs fabricated in a commercial 350 nm SiGe technology were exposed to 10-keV X-rays to a total ionizing dose of up to 3 Mrad(SiO2). The TID-induced performance changes of the LNA were modeled by applying degradation to device parameters. In the modeling process, new parameter values after irradiation were estimated based on information in the literature, without direct measurements of SiGe HBTs used in the LNA chip. As a result, the relative contributions of parameters on the circuit metrics were compared, identifying dominant parameters for degradation modeling. For the TID effects on input matching (S11) and NF, the base resistance (RB) and the base-to-emitter capacitance (Cπ) of the input transistor were mostly responsible, whereas the transconductances (gm) played a key role in the output matching (S22) and gain (S21). To validate the proposed approach, it has been applied to a different LNA in the literature and the modeling results predicted the TID-induced degradations within reasonable ranges.

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