Electro-Thermal Analysis of Microwave Limiter Based on the Time-Domain Impulse Response Method Combined With Physical-Model-Based Semiconductor Solver

Abstract

To effectively analyze the electro-thermal characteristics of a semiconductor p-i-n diode in the microwave limiter circuit, a cosimulation algorithm of the time-domain impulse response technique and physical-model-based semiconductor solver is proposed in this article. The physical-model-based semiconductor solver algorithm is based on the drift diffusion model (DDM). First, the multiphysical field coupling equations of the drift diffusion model and heat conduction model are used to analyze the electro-thermal behavior of a semiconductor p-i-n diode. Second, the time-domain impulse response technique based on the field–circuit coupling algorithm is used to extract the time-domain impulse response at each port of the electromagnetic field structure. Finally, the time-domain impulse response is combined with the volt–ampere characteristic relationship of the physical-model-based p-i-n diode. As a result, an efficient computation of the time-domain electro-thermal coupling characteristics of p-i-n diode in the microwave limiter can be obtained. The simulation results are in good agreement with those by the commercial software (COMSOL). The computation time and the memory requirement of the proposed algorithm are significantly reduced when compared with COMSOL.