Title :
RF circuit performance degradation due to hot carrier effects and soft breakdown
Author :
Xiao, Enjun ; Yuan, J.S.
Author_Institution :
Chip Design & Reliability Lab., Central Florida Univ., Orlando, FL, USA
Abstract :
A methodology to systematically study hot carrier and soft breakdown effects on RF circuits is proposed, and verified with a 2.45GHz low noise amplifier (LNA) and a 1GHz voltage controlled oscillator (VCO). MOSFETs of 0.16 μm technology are stressed, and DC and RF parameters are extracted and used for BERT and SpectreRF simulations to give RF circuit performance degradations due to HC and SBD effects with respect to operation time. Design guidelines for more reliable RF circuits are given after simulation and analysis.
Keywords :
MOSFET; UHF amplifiers; UHF oscillators; circuit reliability; hot carriers; semiconductor device breakdown; voltage-controlled oscillators; 0.16 micron; 2.45 GHz; BERT simulation; DC stress; MOSFET; RF circuit design; SpectreRF simulation; hot carrier effect; low noise amplifier; parameter extraction; reliability; soft breakdown; voltage controlled oscillator; Breakdown voltage; Circuit noise; Circuit optimization; Circuit simulation; Degradation; Electric breakdown; Hot carrier effects; Hot carriers; Radio frequency; Voltage-controlled oscillators;
Conference_Titel :
Circuits and Systems, 2002. MWSCAS-2002. The 2002 45th Midwest Symposium on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7523-8
DOI :
10.1109/MWSCAS.2002.1187142
