It has been found that a harmonic analysis of the usual power-law transfer characteristic of the JFET does not yield equations which accurately predict the third-harmonic distortion products for short-gate structures. However, if field-dependent mobility in the drain-source channel is taken into consideration in the equations for the drain current, a transfer characteristic is obtained of the form

, where Z
Dis the normalized channel height and Γ is the field factor. Equations for the distortion products M
2and M
3, which are derived from this type of characteristic, accurately predict M
2and M
3for actual devices as a function of physical parameters. Lower limits on the values of M
2and M
3which can be achieved in a practical JFET are presented.