Simulation of temperature effects on GaAs MESFET based on physical model

Abstract

The Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system for radar equipment is paid more and more attention by researchers in recent years. Owing to its high reliability and performance, the Active Phased Array Radar (APAR) has been playing an increasingly important role in the modern radar field which is composed of thousands of solid-state Transmit/Receive (T/R) modules. As the power source of the T/R module, gallium arsenide metal-semiconductor field effect transistor (GaAs MESFET) has been widely used due to its higher electron mobility, operating frequency, power-added efficiency and lower noise figures than silicon MOSFET. However, the performance of GaAs MESFET is influenced by its operating temperature significantly. In order to achieve effective fault injection for the PHM system, it's necessary to get temperature effects on GaAs MESFET. A simplified GaAs MESFET equivalent circuit model based on specific physical properties is proposed and realized on the EDA software. It can help the optimizing of device's structure and materials' parameters. What is more, it realizes the performance simulation under varied temperatures, thus the degradation of GaAs MESFET's output parameters can be predicted by monitoring its temperature.