Displacement Damage Effects Mitigation Approach for Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor Frequency Synthesizers

This work focuses on the design issues of radio frequency (RF) bipolar integrated circuits (ICs) as a part of frequency synthesizers for extreme environmental applications. It is shown that silicon-germanium (SiGe) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) as well as bipolar RF ICs (including frequency dividers, voltage-controlled oscillators, and wide-band amplifiers) are highly sensitive to ambient temperature and radiation-induced displacement damage. This article also presents a design approach based on specialized HBT macromodels and hardening techniques.