Experimental investigation and electro-thermal-stress modeling of GaAs and LDMOS FET under conductive electromagnetic pulse (EMP)

Investigation on conductive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects on performance degradation and breakdown of GaAs MESFET and LDMOS FET-based power amplifiers (PA) are performed in this paper. A special measurement system is built, which consists of an adjustable EMP source, one controller, couplers, limiters, attenuators, one four-channel oscilloscope, and DUT. The PAs performance degradation and their breakdown areas are observed and analyzed by using electro-thermal-stress models for the injected EMP with different widths. The thermal and stress results explain the experimental phenomena well and will be very useful for understanding the interaction mechanisms of real radio frequency power applications in a complex electromagnetic environment.