Speeding up the simulation of the semiconductor device under microwave interference

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of high‐power microwave interferences on electronic devices needs the simulation of semiconductor components. Although the semiconductor equations can be solved numerically by Newton method, the conventional Newton method exhibits significant speed degradation when the power of interference is high enough to cause device burnout. Therefore, this paper aims at speeding up the simulation of the semiconductor components under high‐power microwave interferences.

Design/methodology/approach

Some approximations in conventional Newton method works efficiently only when the electric field in the simulated semiconductor is relatively low. This is the reason of the formerly mentioned speed degradation problem. The proposed method speeds up the simulation by modifying these approximations to acquire enough precision in these high‐power situations.

Findings

The modified Newton method proposed in this paper shows an acceleration of 100‐150 percent compared to conventional method for typical applications. Moreover, the simulation speed becomes nearly independent of the power of the microwave interferences, which means the speed degradation phenomenon of the conventional method has almost been eliminated.

Originality/value

This paper proposes a modified Newton method to speed up the simulation of the semiconductor components under high‐power microwave interferences.

Citation

Chen, X., Du, Z. and Gong, K. (2010), "Speeding up the simulation of the semiconductor device under microwave interference", COMPEL - The international journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, Vol. 29 No. 3, pp. 856-864. https://doi.org/10.1108/03321641011028350