Title :
Gate oxide breakdown on low noise and power amplifier performance
Author :
Yang, Hong ; Smith, Wade ; Yuan, J.S.
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Univ. of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
Abstract :
This paper, for the first time, studies the influence nMOSFET gate oxide breakdown (BD) has on the performance of CMOS low noise amplifiers (LNA) and power amplifiers (PA) using an equivalent RF circuit model. Cascode LNAs are found to be more reliable than common source LNAs in terms of gate oxide reliability. It is shown for a Class-E PA oxide breakdown effects lead to an increase in the switching transistor\´s "on" voltage, which, in turn leads to substantial decreases in the output power and drain efficiency.
Keywords :
CMOS analogue integrated circuits; MOSFET; equivalent circuits; power amplifiers; radiofrequency amplifiers; radiofrequency integrated circuits; semiconductor device breakdown; CMOS IC; Class-E PA; cascode LNA; common source LNA; equivalent RF circuit model; gate oxide breakdown; gate oxide reliability; low noise amplifier; nMOSFET; power amplifier; switching transistor; Breakdown voltage; Circuit noise; Electric breakdown; Lead compounds; Low-noise amplifiers; MOSFET circuits; Power generation; Radio frequency; Radiofrequency amplifiers; Semiconductor device modeling;
Conference_Titel :
Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, 2003 IEEE
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7694-3
DOI :
10.1109/RFIC.2003.1214034
