Analysis and Experimental Study of Radiative Microwave Pulses Effects on the Nonlinear Performance of a Low-Noise Amplifier

In this article, the performance of an unshielded low-noise amplifier (LNA), which is subjected to the incident high power microwave (HPM) pulse waves, is investigated analytically and experimentally. For this purpose, a time-domain algorithm is proposed, which uses the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method and a globally convergent iterative method to solve linear and nonlinear equations of the problem simultaneously. In particular, the effects of external incident electromagnetic (EM) field illumination with different types of waveforms, including HPM pulses and sinusoidal waves, on the nonlinear performance of a microwave LNA are investigated and discussed by this method. Furthermore, using a measurement setup comprised of a transverse EM (TEM) cell, the proposed method is validated by comparing with the measurement results in good agreement. The presented analysis would be useful in EM interference/compatibility (EMI/EMC) analysis, such as radiated susceptibility analysis of RF/microwave nonlinear circuits excited by the incident HPM pulse wave.