Design of power FETs based on coupled electro-thermal-electromagnetic modeling

A comprehensive modeling approach is applied to the study of pHEMT transistors for microwave power amplifier applications. This approach combines physical, electromagnetic and thermal simulations to model large power transistors used in these applications, allowing both the individual finger contribution and the global performance to be investigated in an efficient manner, which can be used with commercial CAD tools. In this way, the design of the transistor structure contributes to the optimization of the RF performances of the complete amplifier. Discrete transistor and MMIC designs are investigated using this work with validation based on infrared and microwave measurements.