Abstract

The transport equations for charges in a semiconductor have been solved for a periodic voltage excitation by means of a harmonic approach, for modelling of microwave and millimetre-wave active devices. The solution is based on the expansion of the unknown physical quantities in Fourier series in the time domain, and on the discretisation in the space domain. A Waveform-Balance technique in the time domain is used to solve the resulting non-linear equations system. In this way the time step is determined only by Nyquist's sampling requirements at the operating frequency, irrespective of the relaxation times of the semiconductor. This approach allows for a longer time step, and therefore a shorter computing time, than a space- and time-discretised standard solution for many cases of interest, opening the way to effective device simulation.