A proposed method to study the parasitic resistance of Ka-band Silicon IMPATT diode from large-signal electric field snap-shots

In this paper a novel method based on the concept of time varying depletion width modulation at large-signal levels is proposed to obtain the parasitic resistance of the inactive region of Ka-band Silicon Single-Drift Region (SDR) Impact Avalanche Transit Time (IMPATT) diodes. A complete simulation software based on non-sinusoidal voltage excitation method is developed to obtain the large-signal electric field snap-shots of the device at different bias current densities and different phase angles of a full cycle of steady-state oscillation from which the parasitic series resistance of the device is calculated. The series resistance is also calculated from the conventional method i.e., from the large-signal admittance characteristics at threshold frequency. The results however show that the proposed method to determine the series resistance provides better and closer agreement with the experimentally reported value than the conventional method.