Analytical study of substrate parasitic effects in common-base and common-emitter SiGe BHT amplifiers

Abstract

An analytical study to quantify the substrate parasitic effects on SiGe HBT amplifiers in both common-base and common-emitter configuration is presented. The power gain relations and stability factors are derived from the modelled S-parameters which are computed at a fixed bias point from the small-signal hybrid-∏ model of SiGe HBT in both configurations. It has been shown that the power gains of SiGe HBT amplifiers in both configurations are degraded when extrinsic and substrate parasitics are taken into account. The degradation in power gains is found to be more pronounced for CB configuration, which makes the design of HBT amplifiers, particularly in the CB mode, difficult. Close matching of the modelled data with the reported experimental results validates the proposed methodology.

Keywords

• Common-base
• Common-emitter
• Maximum Available Gain (MAG)
• Maximum Stable Gain (MSG)
• Scattering parameters
• SiGe HBT
• Stability factor
• Substrate parasitics