High-frequency noise modeling of MOSFETs (1997)

. . The down-scaling of M O S ~ S to deepsubmicron dmensions and the resulting very high unity-gain frequencies of tens of GigaHertz make MOSFETs increasingly attractive for applications in integrated high-frequency analog. electronics, wireless commi it is based on a direct calculation technique for describing the four noise parameters which is suitable for circuit simulators; and it includes a de-embedding procedure for both noise and s-parameters using special test structures. Addi tioplly, it i s the first. description of a self-consistent small-signal model for MOSFETs that predicts accurately both their AC as well as their noise performance over a range of frequencies and biasing currents. Finally, the impact of P gate resistance, the induced gate noise, and the noise improvement using multi-finger gates are investipied both experimentally and theoretically. It is my pleasure to acknowledge the thoughtful guidance provided by Dr. M J. Deen, my senior supervisor, during the course of t h ~ s thesis, and for affording me the opportunity b r academic adkiheement. Without his careful supervision, encouragement, assistance and feedback, this thais would not be comple~d. I also thank the following members of Prof. Jarnal Deen's Inwgrated Devices and Circuits Research Group Dr. M. Aoki (Texas Instruments. ~ a ~ a n ) , D r . A. Bandyopahdyay (now at Oregon State University). Prof. X.Y Chen (now at University of Tromso, Norway), Prof. E. Gutierrez (INAOE, Puebla), T. Hardy (now at NRC), Javier de la Kdalga (INAOE, Puebla), P. Kolev, W. S. Kwan, X. Lu (now at PMC Sierra), F. Ma (now at Bell Labs), S. An, M. Margarit (now at Rockwell), L. Nathawad (now a graduate student at Stanford), M. Oulmane, L. Peters (now a graduate student at Berkeley), A. Raychaudhuri (now at Rockwell), Prof. S. Rurnyantsev (Ioffe Institute, Russia), Y. Xlao, Z.X. Yan (now at Rockwell), X. Zhao (now at Nortel) and W Zhong for their support, comments and assistance during the course of this research. I wish to thank Dr. Steve Hardy and Dr. M~chael Schroter for acting as members of my thesis examining committee, Dr Shawn Stapleton for his assistance with the microwave measurements, and Dr. M. Syrzycki, J. Chen and B. Ghodsian for their help with Cadence. I would like to thank some members of the Silicon Technology Group of ' I Nortel, for their comments during the initial st.ages of this research, and the Canadian ~~croelectronics Corporation for arranging the fabrication of the test chips. I would also like to thank R. Kok and Prof. J. Tauritz of the Microwave Group, DIMES, Delft University of technology for a preliminary description of parts of the ATN noise system, and K. Aufinger, Siemens, for a discussion on pad de-embedlng for noise calculations. I am also grateful to Mcronet, a Federal Center of Excellence in Microelectronics, . ,Wtel, Nortel, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Simon Fraser University Graduate Fellowship program, the Lang Wang Memorial Schdarship, and the Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science Research Fellowship program, for various financial support of this research. 1 Last, but not least, I thank my family for heir encouragement, and continuing support in my academic pursuits.