Investigation of heavy-ion strikes on a fin field-effect transistor-based low-noise amplifier

Abstract

The consequences of heavy-ion strikes on a fin field-effect transistor-based low-noise amplifier (LNA) are analyzed in this paper. A popular LNA topology, cascoded LNA, is selected to study the single-event effect using numerical device simulation. A heavy-ion strike resulting in a current pulse (known as a single-event transient) disturbs the LNA output. These disturbances are analyzed in the time and frequency domains. The collected charge (Q C) is used as a metric in the time domain, and the spurious frequencies generated are investigated in the frequency domain. This study is performed using four different LNA operating frequencies, 10 GHz, 30 GHz, 60 GHz, and 77 GHz. It is found that for a given dose of radiation, the performance of the LNA operating at the lowest frequency, i.e. 10 GHz, suffers the most from the radiation strike.