MESFET physical model helps for reliable MMICs design

The cost reduction is the major concern of companies willing to insert MMICs in large projects like phased array antennas and not necessarily experienced in the GaAs technology area. Therefore a worst case analysis (WCA) of the envisaged circuit becomes as important as the electrical design itself. A reliable WCA has to be done from process parameters´ variations rather than from uncorrelated electrical deviations which means the use of physical modeling of the elements. The model presented by the authors, FETMOD, is a very convenient MESFET simulator, easy to handle and fast to run as required for a circuit analysis. It has been used with satisfaction for a successful MMIC amplifier design and can be run on a personal computer FETMOD has been also validated by re-computing the data coming from four different GaAs foundries. Consequently such a simulator can be used to compare and have some ideas on the degree of quality of the different processes