A physically based small-signal circuit model for heterostructure acoustic charge transport devices

A physically based small-signal circuit model for GaAs-AlGaAs Schottky gate heterostructure acoustic charge transport (HACT) devices is presented. Analytical expressions for the instantaneous and average channel current as a function of gate voltage are obtained from physical device parameters. The charge injection model is based on subthreshold current models for GaAs MESFETs. It is shown that the shape of the sampling aperture of the charge injection operation is approximately Gaussian. Good agreement is obtained between the measured DC channel current versus gate voltage and that predicted by the model. Equivalent circuits for the transfer and output sensing operations and expressions for noise sources due to the physical processes that occur within the device are developed. Thermal, shot, and transfer noise are treated. The form of the analytic expressions for frequency response and noise figure allows easy implementation on commercially available CAE software. Simulations of both gain and noise figure performed on Libra show good agreement with measured data