A Fully Nonlinear Compact Modeling Approach for High-Frequency Noise in Large-Signal Operated Microwave Electron Devices

A technology-independent, inherently nonlinear approach is proposed for the compact modelling of high-frequency noise in microwave transistors under large-signal operating conditions. For the compact nonlinear noise model formulation we assume that noise generation can be described by a suitable set of distributed stochastic processes perturbing a very general, non-quasi-static deterministic description of the electron device, in accordance with the strategies adopted in physics-based methods for the choice and exploitation of microscopic diffusion noise sources. The propagation of the internal distributed noise sources up to the intrinsic device terminals leads to a set of non-stationary, correlated equivalent noise generators, nonlinearly controlled by the instantaneous large-signal working point of the device. Starting from a first formulation for the generators, formally derived from a physics-based description of the noise generation mechanisms widely adopted in distributed numerical modeling, mild approximations provide a fully behavioral representation that can be empirically extracted on the basis of measurement data only, and can be easily implemented into commercial computer-aided design tools by means of conventional, uncorrelated noise sources. As far as small-signal (i.e., linear) bias-dependent operation is concerned, it is shown how well-known, widely applied compact models for high-frequency noise can be considered as linearized special cases of the proposed approach. For a full validation, experimental examples are provided, both in small- and large-signal operation, for a GaAs-pHEMT, by considering the case study of a broad-band low-noise amplifier progressively driven into nonlinear regime by an increasing power interferer.