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
fDate :
Sept. 30 2013-Oct. 3 2013
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;
Conference_Titel :
Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting (BCTM), 2013 IEEE
Conference_Location :
Bordeaux
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4799-0126-5
DOI :
10.1109/BCTM.2013.6798168
