An electrothermal model for AlGaN/GaN power HEMTs including trapping effects to improve large-signal simulation results on high VSWR

A large-signal electrothermal model for AlGAN/GaN HEMTs including gate and drain related trapping effects is proposed here. This nonlinear model is well formulated to preserve convergence capabilities and simulation times. Extensive measurements have demonstrated the impact of trapping effects on the shapes of I(V) characteristics, as well as load cycles. It is shown that accurate modeling of gate- and drain-lag effects dramatically improves the large-signal simulation results. This is particularly true when the output loads deviate from the optimum matching conditions corresponding to real-world simulations. This new model and its modeling approach are presented here. Large-signal simulation results are then reported and compared to load-pull and large-signal network analyzer measurements for several load impedances at high voltage standing wave ratio and at two frequencies.