On-Wafer Measurement of Transistor Noise Parameters at NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has developed the capability to measure noise parameters on a wafer in the 1-12.4-GHz range. The authors describe the measurement method and the uncertainty analysis and present results of measurements on a highly reflective transistor. Typical standard uncertainties are within the range of 20-25 K in T
_min
, which is the minimum transistor noise temperature, and about 0.03 in the magnitude of Gamma
_opt
, which is the reflection coefficient for which T
_min
occurs