Hot Carrier Injection Compensation

摘要

Methods and devices are described for compensating an effect of aging due to, for example, hot carrier injection, or other device degradation mechanisms affecting a current flow, in an RF amplifier. In one case a replica circuit is used to sense the aging of the RF amplifier and adjust a biasing of the RF amplifier accordingly.

主权项

1. A radio frequency (RF) amplifier arrangement configured to operate in one of at least two modes of operation, the RF amplifier arrangement comprising:
a first transistor stack; and a second transistor stack, the second transistor stack being a reduced-size replica of the first transistor stack, wherein: during the first mode of operation, the first transistor stack and the second transistor stack operate in parallel as an amplifier to provide an output RF signal at an amplifier output node common to an output of the first transistor stack and to an output of the second transistor stack, the amplifier output node coupled to a supply voltage through an inductor, and during the second mode of operation, the output of the second transistor is decoupled from the amplifier output node and coupled to the supply voltage through a resistor.