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JIMMA UNIVERSITY
JIMMA INSTITUE OF TECHNOLOGY
FACULTY OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
4th YEAR COMMUNICATION STREAM
MICROWAVE DEVICES AND STRUCTURE PROJECT:
ACTIVE MICROWAVE DEVICES
Stream of communication focus area
group members
no. id. no

1.Warkena Abay Ru 2347/10

2. Mahammed Shamil Ru 1837/10
3. Ephrem Ashagre Ru 1418/10
4. Bontu Amenu Ru 1256/10
5.Muluken Tamiru Ru 1983/10
6.Wondimu Kenate Ru 2363/10
7. Yakob Nuramin Ru 2373/10
8. Sead Yimer Ru 2161/10
9. Mikyas Teklay Ru 1928/10
ACTIVE MICROWAVE DEVICES

Outline Of The Active Microwave Devices

Introduction
Definition of active microwave devices
Types of active microwave devices
Characteristics of active microwave devices
Advantage and disadvantage
 Introduction
Active microwave devices are the workhorses of microwave systems.
Its function including the transformation of DC current to RF current
or oscillation the conversion of signal at one frequency to another .
Active device are requires a source of energy for its operation and has
an output that is a function of present and past input signals.
The transfer characteristic of an active device is a function of its DC
operating point, its frequency band and the power level of its input
signal.
An active microwave device usually is embedded in a passive
matching circuit, which optimizes its performance andprovides the
devices grounding path.
Definition of active microwave devices
What is active microwave devices ?
 It is based on the transmission of long wavelength energy and it is a device that
requires a source of energy for its operation and has an output that is a function
of present and past input signals.
 Active components are the elements or devices which are capable of providing
or delivering energy to the circuit. Passive components are the ones that do not
require any external source for the operation and are capable of storing
energy in the form of voltage or current in the circuit.
 All active devices control the flow of electric charges through them. Some
active devices allow a voltage to control this current while other active devices
allow another current to do the job. Devices utilizing a static voltage as the
controlling signal are, not surprisingly, called voltage-controlled devices.
Devices working on the principle of one current controlling another current are
known as current-controlled devices.
Types of active microwave devices
There are many types of active microwave devices.
High electron-mobility transistor (HEMT)
Bipolar junction transistor (BJT)
step recovery diodes and etc.
Field-effect transistor (FET)
Metal-semiconductor field effect transistor (MESFET)
P-I-N diodes
Heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT)
The silicon light-diffusion metal-oxide (LDMOS)
Schottky diodes
High electron-mobility transistor (HEMT)
It is a field–effect transistor incorporating a junction between two
materials.
Low noise amplifiers
Installed in radio telescope
Abrupt discontinuities
Separating majority carriers and ionized impurities minimizes the
degradation in mobility
Has high gain
Application of HEMT
Originally for high speed application
 Cont..
Power amplifiers
For cell phones
For radar
Most for radio frequency application
Metal-semiconductor field effect transistor (MESFET)
MESFET = Schotty gate FET
It consists conducting channel position b/n a source and drain.
Carrier flow from the source to drain and controlled by Schotty metal
gate.
Channel is controlled by depletion layer
 Cont…
• Have higher mobility of carriers in
channel
• Limits forward bias voltage
• Difficult to fabricate circuits which
contain large number of the
enhancement mode.
• The channel or conducting layer is a
thin or lightly doped.
• Under pinch-off conditions the drain
current drops to a very small value
therefore transistor act as
switch/voltage controlled circuit.
• Used for cellular phones, satellite
receivers, radar, microwave devices.
• High frequency devices
 Bipolar junction transistor (BJT)
• A bipolar transistor is semiconductor device in which electric I flows due
to electrons and holes both simultaneously. Thus both of charges take
part in the conduction of I through it. Hence it called bipolar transistor.
• It can be uses as amplifier and logic switches and it consist of PN
junction formed by sandwiching either P type or n type b/n a pair of
opposite types. Those are NPN or PNP transistor and contains three
terminals collector, base, and emitter.
• Emitter which is supplies charge carriers(electrons holes)
• Base which form two pn junctions.
• Collector which is collect charges and it always reverse biased.
• BJT can operated in three different regions.
• Those are saturation, cut-off and active regions.
 Cont…
Active region: is operated when the emitter-base junction is forward
biased and collector-base junction is reverse biased.
The collector current is said to have tow current components one due to
forward and the other is due to reverse biasing junction and reverse
biasing junction is called reverse saturation current which is very small
in magnitude.
Saturation region: is operated when both junction is forward biased .
Cut-off region: is operated when both junction are reverse biased. In this
region the current in transistor in very small and thus when a transistor in
this region it assumed to be off state.
BJT is current controlled devices.
BJT is lower cost and smaller in size, especially in small-signal circuits.
Low operating voltages for greater safety and tighter clearances.
 Field-effect transistor (FET)
FET are: unipolar device means that operation depends only one type of
charge carriers (holes or electrons)
It is voltage controlled device (gate voltage controls drain current).
Very high impedance and less noisy as compared to BJT.
Self limiting device and very small in size, occupies very small space
in Ics.
FET has less effect by radiation than BJT.
Temperature stable than BJT.
Less noise compare to BJT.
Can be fabricated with fewer processing.
Longer life.
High efficiency.
 Types of FET
Classification of FET

FET
JFET MOSFET
Enhancement
N-channel P-channel MOSFET N-channel

Depletion
MOSFET P-channel
 Step Recovery Diodes
It is heavily doped diode with an ultrafast switching time .
Used for higher order multiplier and will multiple as 20x when used as a comb generator.
In most application the SRD is used as charge controlled switch. When forward biased ,
charge is injected into the diode making it a low impedance.
The SRD is designed to have the fastest transition an d also used for fast switching
application. This is achieved by reduced doping at he junction.
Operation: when it forward biased and charge enters it the diode appears as normal diode
and it behaves in much the same way.
When diodes switch from forward conduction to reverse cut-off, a reverse current flows
briefly as stored charge is removed. When all the charge is removed it suddenly turns off.
SRD is used for the generation of microwave pulses and for waveform shaping.
Its drawback is that switching speed reduces with the increment in frequency.
 Heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT)
HBT is an improvement of the BJT that can handle signals of very high
frequencies up to several hundred GHz.
It is allow us to dope the base heavily reducing the base resistance and still
maintaining a large gain.
Reduce devices parasitic and smaller electron transmit times and high
emitter injection efficiency.
HBTs are used for digital and analog microwave applications with
frequencies as high as Ku band. HBTs can provide faster switching speeds
than silicon bipolar transistors mainly because of reduced base resistance
and collector-to-substrate capacitance.
The HBT works exactly as a BJT. The base-emitter juction is forward biased
and the collector-base junction is reversed biased. The equilibrium is
disturbed and electrons are injected from the emitter into the base.
 P-I-N diodes
A PIN diode is a diode with a wide, undoped intrinsic semiconductor region between a P-type
semiconductor and n-type semiconductor region. The p-type and n-type regions are typically
heavily doped because they are used for ohmic contacts.
The PIN diode is used as a photo detector to convert the light into the current which takes
place in the depletion layer of a photo diode, rising the depletion layer by inserting the intrinsic
layer progresses the performance by increasing the volume in where light change occurs. 
A PIN diode operates under what is known as high-level injection. In other words, the intrinsic
region is flooded with charge carriers from the "p" and "n" regions.
Advantages of PIN diode :
Low noise
Low dark current
Low bias voltage
Higher reverse voltages to be tolerated
High-speed response
Low junction capacitance 
Large depletion region 
 Cont…
Disadvantages of PIN diode :
Less sensitivity
No internal gain
Small area
Slow response time
High reverse recovery time due to power loss are significant