The influence of microwave pulse repetition frequency on the thermal burnout effect of a PIN diode limiting-amplifying system

This paper analyzes the influence of the microwave pulse repetition frequency on the thermal burnout effect of a PIN diode limiting-amplifying system. Based on the study of the single-shot microwave pulse thermal burnout effect and by introducing a new assumption that the heat dissipation of the electric field energy and the nonequilibrium carrier energy during the microwave pulse intervals can be neglected, the theoretical thermal burnout model in our previous study is extended to be suitable for repetitive microwave pulses. The theoretical relationship among the pulse number, the pulse repetition frequency, the pulse width and the thermal burnout power threshold is obtained by theoretical derivation. Because the assumptions are introduced, the theoretical relationship requires that both the whole length of a repetitive microwave pulse and the pulse width in a cycle of a repetitive microwave pulse should be between 10 ns and 10 μs. The results obtained by the theoretical relationship are in good agreement with the simulation results obtained by our self-designed device-circuit joint simulator, which verifies the correctness of the theoretical analyses, modeling and derivation. By fitting at least two sets of simulation or experimental data, the theoretical relationship can be used to predict the thermal burnout power thresholds of PIN diode limiting-amplifying systems under microwave pulse injections with different pulse parameters. It can greatly reduce the simulation or experimental costs and could be helpful for the design of a radio frequency receiver.