Empirical Investigation on Time Dispersion of Microwave Electron Device Characteristics under Nonlinear Dynamic Operating Conditions

In this paper, a measurement set-up is described for the investigation on microwave electron device characteristic time dispersion (or “walkout”), occurring in nonlinear dynamic operation. The stress procedure is carried out by applying a large amplitude excitation signal at moderately high frequency at either the input or the output port of the device. The corresponding forward or reverse mode of operation can be easily configured by means of a switch manipulation, exploiting the symmetrical, dual-channel architecture of the system. The walkout of the device characteristics, which can be either a bipolar- or a field effect-transistor, can be observed both at the end of the stress test and in real-time during the test execution.