Investigation of electronic packaging on the performance of SAW devices

Electronic packaging has a significant influence on the performance of surface acoustical wave (SAW) devices for frequencies over 500 MHz. To precisely design the SAW devices, the packaging structure must be considered concurrently in the design process so that the overall performance of both the SAW device and the packaging structure satisfies the design specifications, In this paper, two methods have been investigated to design the SAW device packaging structure. One is the circuit method, which extracts an equivalent lumped element model for the packaging structure. It allows the analysis of the package and the SAW device together in SPICE environment. Another is the field method, which uses a full wave simulation. The effectiveness and limitations of the two methods are discussed. The results of the simulations match those of the measurements very well, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the authors' methodology.