Keywords

Electric discharges, Power amplifiers, Radio frequency

Abstract

Today, ESD is a major consideration in the design and manufacture of ICs. ESD problems are increasing in the electronics industry because of the increasing trend toward higher speed and smaller device sizes. There is growing interest in knowing the effects of ESD protection circuit on the performance of semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) because of the impact it has on core RF circuit performance. This study investigated the impact of ESD protection circuit on RF Power amplifiers. Even though ESD protection for digital circuits has been known for a while, RF-ESD is a challenge. From a thorough literature search on prior art ESD protection circuits, Silicon controlled rectifier was found to be most effective and reliable ESD protection for power amplifier circuit. A SCR based ESD protection was used to protect the power amplifier and a model was developed to gain better understanding of ESD protected power amplifiers. Simulated results were compared and contrasted against theoretically derived equations. A 5.2GHz fully ESD protected Class AB power amplifier was designed and simulated using TSMC 0.18 um technology. Further, the ESD protection circuit was added to a cascoded Class-E power amplifier operating at 5.2 GHz. ADS simulation results were used to analyze the PA’s RF performance degradation. Various optimization techniques were used to improve the RF circuit performance.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2011

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Yuan, Jiann S.

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0003630

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0003630

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Engineering and Computer Science, Engineering and Computer Science -- Dissertations, Academic

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