Microwave characterization of a double-barrier GaAs/AlAs resonant tunneling diodes for active microstrip transmission lines

We describe a method of parameters extraction for the lumped element network representing resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs). The method is based on onchip reflection coefficient measurements in a wide frequency range from 1 kHz up to 60 GHz in combination with differential resistance measurements. We have proposed and fabricated double-barrier GaAs/AlAs RTDs embedded into the 50-Ohm coplanar transmission line section, suitable for onchip RF-measurements using a probe station and a vector network analyzer. A good agreement between the experimental S11-parameter curves and the curves calculated from the equivalent lumped network is obtained for various RTD bias voltages. A possible operation of a distributed RTDs as an active microstrip transmission line (MTL) is also discussed. Experimentally extracted parameters of the lumped equivalent network are used to define amplification conditions in MTLs based on distributed RTDs.