A novel methodology to evaluate RF reliability for SOI CMOS-based Power Amplifier mmWave applications

A new methodology to evaluate reliability under RF mmWave (f
₀
>=28GHz) conditions is proposed. RF stress was performed on a pre-matched Power Amplifier (PA) single transistor cell for various RF input power (P
_in
) and drain voltage (V
_DS
) levels to measure RF degradation. A good correlation between RF time slopes to DC Hot Carrier Injection (HCI) is observed. PA simulations were performed using energy driven model for HCI. Results show good correlation between measured data establishing the validity of the reliability models under mmWave conditions.