Analysis of harmonic distortion of asymmetric self-cascode association of SOI nMOSFETs operating in saturation

This paper presents an experimental analysis of the harmonic distortion of asymmetric self-cascode (A-SC) association of SOI transistors. This goal is achieved by comparing the A-SC to the symmetric self-cascode (S-SC) configuration with different channel lengths. The non-linearity data have been obtained by applying the Integral Function Method to experimental measurements, for the evaluation of the total and third-order harmonic distortion. The results show that the asymmetric self-cascode provides lower total harmonic distortion than S-SC for all studied channel length associations. If a target distortion level is fixed, the A-SC enables an increase of input signal amplitude. On the other hand, smaller input signal amplitude and distortion are verified in the A-SC when fixing the output amplitude.