Direct extraction of the AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor small-signal equivalent circuit

The authors describe a novel, direct technique for determining the small-signal equivalent circuit of a heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT). The parasitic elements are largely determined from measurements of test structures, reducing the number of elements determined from measurements of the transistor. The intrinsic circuit elements are evaluated from y-parameter data, which are DC-embedded from the known parasitics. The equivalent-circuit elements are uniquely determined at any frequency. The validity of this technique is confirmed by showing the frequency independence of the extracted circuit elements. The equivalent circuit models the HBT s-parameters over a wide range of collector currents. Throughout the entire 1-18-GHz frequency range, the computed s-parameters agree very well with the experimental data