A perspective on compact transistor modeling for future microwave and millimeter-wave GaN power amplifier design

In this paper we present an approach for the development of a compact nonlinear model for use in the design of discrete and MMIC GaN power amplifiers for microwave and millimeter-wave applications. We propose that the compact model use current and charge state functions modeled with continuously-differentiable functions, be fully charge conservative, cover the complete current-voltage and charge-voltage space, include dynamical models for thermal effects and trapping, and provide size scalability. Speed of simulation and convergence are vitally important concerns; these aspects need to be addressed in the detailed formulation of the algebraic functions used in the model. A parameter-extraction procedure is also outlined.

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