The effect of gate leakage on the noise figure of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs

Abstract

The effect of gate leakage on the noise figure of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMTs) is explored. It is shown that these devices have a sizable amount of gate leakage that cannot be ignored when measuring their noise performance. Measurements across a single sample have more than 1 dB of variation in minimum noise figure. We will show this variation is because of gate leakage. A modified van der Ziel model is used to predict this large variation and allows easy noise figure prediction of HEMT and MESFET devices.