Design of Broadband Non-Foster Circuits based on Resonant Tunneling Diodes

A non-Foster circuit (NFC) based on the resonant tunneling diode (RTD) is proposed for application to broadband impedance matching of electrically small antennas (ESAs). NFCs have traditionally been implemented with transistor pairs to achieve negative impedance, but these have limitations with respect to performance and operational bandwidth at high frequencies. At certain biasing voltages, double barrier RTDs behave as negative differential resistance (NDR) devices, which may be transformed to exhibit negative impedance. In contrast to the transistor-based NFC, these structures serve to gyrate or invert the load impedance, such that an inductive load will lead to a negative capacitance, and vice versa. This device is termed a negative impedance inverter (NII). We demonstrate negative impedance behavior for prototypes with measurements of negative resistance at up to 3 GHz, and device gain of around 5 dB from DC to 4 GHz. Design for stability of the RTD is performed using the Nyquist stability criterion. Stabilized negative capacitance NFCs show optimum performance from DC to the GHz range depending upon the load value. These NFCs are used to impedance match an antenna at low frequencies. An antenna with only one resonance at 3.5 GHz has been transformed with two different matching circuits: to an antenna encompassing the 1 to 2 GHz range; as well as the VHF/UHF bands from 300 MHz to 1 GHz. Additionally, RTDs have been demonstrated for operation at up to THz frequencies, so this topology can be extended to higher frequencies subject to fabrication constraints.