DocumentCode
1862699
Title
On the safe operating area of bipolar cascode amplifiers
Author
d´Alessandro, Vincenzo ; Rinaldi, Niccolo ; Metzger, Andre G. ; Banbrook, Hal M.
Author_Institution
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Inf. Technol., Univ. Federico II, Naples, Italy
fYear
2013
fDate
Sept. 30 2013-Oct. 3 2013
Firstpage
171
Lastpage
174
Abstract
This paper presents an investigation of the safe-operating-area boundary of bipolar cascode amplifiers in GaAs and SiGe technologies. A simple relation is derived to predict the instability onset due to electrothermal and avalanche effects. Circuit simulations and experiments performed on GaAs test structures are employed to analyze the influence of thermal coupling between transistors and the beneficial impact of base ballasting.
Keywords
Ge-Si alloys; III-V semiconductors; amplifiers; bipolar transistor switches; gallium arsenide; GaAs; SiGe; avalanche effects; bipolar cascode amplifiers; electrothermal effects; safe operating area; thermal coupling; Gallium arsenide; Heterojunction bipolar transistors; SPICE; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Temperature measurement; Thermal resistance; bipolar transistor; cascode amplifier; common-emitter amplifier; impact ionization; safe operating area; thermal resistance;
fLanguage
English
Publisher
ieee
Conference_Titel
Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM), 2013 IEEE
Conference_Location
Bordeaux
ISSN
1088-9299
Print_ISBN
978-1-4799-0126-5
Type
conf
DOI
10.1109/BCTM.2013.6798168
Filename
6798168
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