Optoelectronic transient characterization of ultrafast devices

Recent advances in state-of-the-art optoelectronic techniques applied to areas pertinent to transistor small-signal and large-signal characterization are discussed. The aspects of optoelectronic techniques for electrical signal measurement, generation, and transmission are studied. On the basis of these results, a large-signal digital-switching transistor characterization methodology is developed. This methodology is used to estimate the parameters of a high-electron-mobility transistor and to obtain the large-signal characteristics of this device on a picosecond time scale. The measurements are compared to a SPICE-based time-domain model. The time-domain measurement technique is extended to obtain two-port frequency-domain characteristics of another, similar transistor with a 100-GHz bandwidth. These results compare favorably to conventional HP8510 network analyzer measurements over a common frequency span of 40 GHz