Potential of High-Voltage Single-Emitter RESURF Horizontal Current Bipolar Transistor for RF Circuits

High-voltage single-emitter (HV SE) Horizontal Current Bipolar Transistor (HCBT) with CMOS $p$-well RESURF region is analyzed with respect to its utilization in RF circuits. If compared to the high-speed (HS) HCBT, it retains the high-frequency characteristics to a certain extent due to the reduced base-collector capacitance by the full depletion of $n$-collector region, which is also accompanied by the breakdown voltage increase (e.g., BVCEO from 3.4 V to 10.5 V). The minimum noise figure $NF_{min}$ of 1.2 dB at 0.9 GHz and 1.54 dB at 2.4 GHz is reported, which is by about 0.2 dB higher than in HS HCBT. Basically, the same linear operating area at low-voltage and high-current regions as in HS HCBT is achieved by transistor area increase, which is relevant for the Class-A power amplifiers. The examined device exhibits maximum output power of 19.3 dBm and gain of 17.3 dB in PldB at 0.9 GHz, $I_{C}=44.4\ \text{mA}$ and $V_{\text{CE}}$ as high as 8 V. Therefore, the HV SE HCBT is shown to be suitable for the sub-5 GHz RF circuits, offering operation at higher $VCE$ attractive for high-voltage applications such as access points.