Electronic Circuit with Controllable Negative Differential Resistance and its Applications

Abstract

Electronic devices and circuits with negative differential resistance (NDR) are widely used in oscillators, memory devices, frequency multipliers, mixers, etc. Such devices and circuits usually have an N-, S-, or Λ-type current-voltage characteristics. In the known NDR devices and circuits, it is practically impossible to increase the negative resistance without changing the type or the dimensions of transistors. Moreover, some of them have three terminals assuming two power supplies. In this paper, a new NDR circuit that comprises a combination of a field effect transistor (FET) and a simple bipolar junction transistor (BJT) current mirror (CM) with multiple outputs is proposed. A distinctive feature of the proposed circuit is the ability to change the magnitude of the NDR by increasing the number of outputs in the CM. Mathematical expressions are derived to calculate the threshold currents and voltages of the N-type current-voltage characteristics for various types of FET. The calculated current and voltage thresholds are compared with the simulation results. The possible applications of the proposed NDR circuit for designing single-frequency oscillators and voltage-controlled oscillators (VCO) are considered. The designed NDR VCO has a very low level of phase noise and has one of the best values of a standard figure of merit (FOM) among recently published VCOs. The effectiveness of the proposed oscillators is confirmed by the simulation results and the implemented prototype.

Influence of Parasitic Effects in Negative Differential Resistance Characteristics of Resonant Tunneling

“…The design and fabrication of resonant tunneling system using practice resonant tunneling electronic (PRTE) structure with NDR characteristics have been proposed in literatures [1,12,13], which have been applied in voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), MVLLs, and MFDs. Basic practice resonant tunneling electronic (BPRTE) structure was defined with two parallel transistors and four resistances.…”

Two-Terminal Electronic Circuits with Controllable Linear NDR Region and Their Applications

“…Ulansky et al [34] presented five electronic circuits of NDR VCOs based on a GaAs transistor and single-output BJT CM. Ulansky et al [35] considered an NDR circuit comprising a FET and a simple BJT CM with multiple outputs that control the slope of the current-voltage curve by changing the number of CM outputs. Yang [36] investigated a resonant tunneling electronic circuit with reactance elements having high and multiple peak-to-valley current density ratios displayed in the NDR curve.…”

“…Most NDR devices and circuits use one, two, or even three power supplies. Such devices have two [14][15][16][17][18][19][20]34,35,38,39], three [18,29,[31][32][33], or four [27] terminals.…”

Special Issue on Intelligent Electronic Devices

“…Ulansky et al reported "Electronic Circuit with Controllable Negative Differential Resistance and its Applications" [11]. In this paper, a new NDR circuit that comprises a combination of a field effect transistor (FET) and a simple bipolar junction transistor (BJT) current mirror (CM) with multiple outputs is proposed.…”