[Amps] LDMOSFET questions for insiders

[Daniel Artaud F6BRD]

Le 04/12/2018 à 17:28, Manfred Mornhinweg a écrit :
> Daniel,
>
> thanks for all your input and links! It has kept me busy and learning 
> for two days.
>
>> Your project is a great task, congratulations.
>
> I just hope I can ever bring it to a successful end!
>
>> The main cause of transistors' failing is drain (collector) 
>> over-voltage which often translates by over-current or avalanche.
>
> The more I read up, the more it looks like I have to take all measures 
> I can to strictly avoid drain overvoltage. I had hoped that I could 
> trust the "extra rugged" LDMOSFETs to safely clamp overvoltage to some 
> extent, possibly enough to keep the amplifier running with high SWR as 
> long as the dissipation doesn't become excessive, but all you wrote 
> and what I could see in those articles discourages me from that idea. 
> For example, on of the articles talks about overvoltage failures 
> happening either on the body of the chip or at its periphery. 
> Obviously any breakdown at the periphery will happen only over a small 
> area, and thus concentrate a lot of power dissipation there, causing 
> failure even at low dissipated power levels. So it looks like I need 
> to at least monitor drain peak voltage to activate the protection, and 
> perhaps even clamp it externally.
>
> At this point I hope that at least I can trust the LDMOSFET's 
> ruggedness  to handle brief overvoltages until the protection kicks 
> in, but it's not encouraging to read Microsemi's paper saying that 
> always some devices will fail during high SWR testing...
>
>> It is very difficult to limit over-voltage even if you limit the 
>> input power, you have to take care of load impedance (swr), overshoot 
>> of ALC, spurious signals, di/dt.
>
> That's my problem. Any load impedance can happen on the antenna port, 
> the low pass filters transform these impedances, the non-zero line 
> length of the impedance transformation circuit transforms it further, 
> and to this we must add that the amp will have to work over 4 octaves 
> into at least half a dozen filters, which makes drain waveform control 
> an impossible task.
>
> Externally clamping drain voltage is difficult due to the high current 
> and low impedance involved. "Active clamping" through negative 
> feedback that drives the transistor on when the voltage goes up can 
> clamp the voltage pretty well, but is somewhat hard to implement 
> without risking gate overvoltage. And of course it puts more 
> dissipation into the transistor, and may increase risk of latch-up. I 
> don't fully understand the last point at this time, I mean, how 
> exactly latch-up happens, and under what exact conditions.
>
> > The second: Temperature, in amateur use, must
>> not be a problem in a well designed amplifier.
>
> Specially in my amplifier, which is supposed to have a high 
> efficiency, thermal design is easier than in a linear class AB 
> amplifier. But that said, I must also say that many high power 
> LDMOSFET ham amplifiers have extremely marginal thermal designs, often 
> running the LDMOSFET dies at or even above the absolutely maximum 
> rated temperature, resulting in high risk of failure. I have also 
> noticed that many ham experimenters, and probably also some designers 
> in the industry, don't fully understand thermal design. They mount the 
> device on a copper heat spreader, mount that on a big heatsink with 
> fans, and then they think they can safely dissipate a kilowatt or more 
> of heat. And unfortunately this isn't the case!  This leads to many 
> hams killing LDMOSFETs simply by overheating them.
>
I thought about temperature range.
I agree with you, and increasing power density is leading to more 
difficult tasks.
>> The problems with SWR are: that with a sudden SWR (open or short 
>> antenna feeder), before the security device begins to respond,the 
>> transistor sees infinite SWR.
>> And when we asked different manufacturers "how much time your device 
>> can sustain an infinite vswr" their response where elusive.
>
> This is largely what motivates my questions here: How much energy can 
> a given LDMOSFET safely clamp, how much power or current can it clamp 
> for how much time, and how much power or current can it clamp 
> continuously with no time limit in CW (not pulsed) operation.
>
> If the answer is "zero", then no protection circuit alone is good 
> enough. The amplifier needs to be designed to actively suppress all 
> drain voltage peaks, for example through carefully designed, 
> non-linear drain-gate feedback. If instead the answer is that the 
> transistor can clamp a well defined amount of energy, with certain 
> current and time limits, then one can do without that non-linear 
> feedback, and use a fast-enough protection circuit that shuts down the 
> amp. And what's important to me too: If the transistor can 
> continuously clamp a certain amount of current, then I can allow 
> operation into some high SWR conditions. If it cannot, then I have to 
> shut it down whenever the SWR goes up, making it less practical.
>
> That's why I want so much to know these data!
>
>> During this High SWR does the transistor see high voltage or drains 
>> high current. High current is not a problem but high voltage is.
>
> I wonder if high current is still no problem even when the amplifier 
> is overdriven, say, by 6dB. When the drive is just right for full 
> linear output, the transistors cannot conduct more than the normal 
> current, so of course high current isn't a problem. But when there is 
> 6dB (or perhaps more!) excess drive in a saturated amplifier, the 
> transistors can conduct twice or more of the normal current. Will they 
> survive that too? For how long? If I correctly understand what happens 
> with the parasitic bipolars in a MOSFET, drain current above a certain 
> limit can turn on the bipolar transistor in a few cells, and that 
> causes instant failure. How much drain current is guaranteed not to 
> cause this problem, in a given transistor? Many LDMOSFET datasheets 
> don't state an absolute maximum drain current!
>
> Note that all the ruggedness testing for the datasheets is done with 
> well-controlled drive, and NEVER with high-efficiency, moderately 
> overdriven amplifiers!
>
Per various datasheets, they withstand a 65:1 SWR ( considered as 
infinite) at nominal pulsed power in class AB during 100 µs - and I will 
add: on a 50 ohm load, transistor mounted on a cold plate as usually 
they do. I think, within those optimistic conditions, you need a 
protection triggering in less than 100 µs.
>> Your idea to monitor vds is paramount and rather easy up to few 
>> hundred MHz with a well shielded resistive divider terminated with 50 
>> ohm connected to an RF cold ground.
>
> Yes, but it's useful only if the transistors can safely clamp 
> overvoltage for some time, but cannot clamp it for a long time. That 
> allows triggering the protection if a sudden SWR increase causes high 
> drain voltage spikes. If instead a transistor cannot safely clamp huge 
> spikes for long enough, it's pointless to activate the protection 
> afetre the transistor has already failed... And if it can clamp 
> overvoltage indefinitely, as long as there is no overheating, then I 
> don't need to measure drain voltage at all, instead I can simply 
> monitor the dissipated power to implement full protection.
>
>> VLF to MW band transmitters which use switched amplifiers in class D 
>> monitor the sign of the reactance to protect mosfets.
>
> That's to keep the transistors in zero voltage switching mode, I 
> suppose. Those transmitters often handle many kilowatts of RF power, 
> while having dissipation capability of only 1kW or less, since they 
> have such high efficiency that they normally don't need more 
> dissipation capability. Of course any reduction in efficiency is 
> critical for them. In my amplifier this will be less critical, because 
> I intend to have a relatively high dissipation capability built-in, 
> for increased reliability, even if in normal operation the dissipation 
> should be rather low.
>
>> I have also seen MRF157s failing in the driver of a big SW broadcast 
>> transmitter when there was a flash in the tube. The tube was 
>> protected by switching off the solid state modulator. (Formerly 
>> protection used ignitrons)
>> A clipper was then added at each transistor drain to limit induced 
>> voltage under Vds max and problems were gone.
>
> Ah, I suspect that those failures were caused by excessive inductance 
> in the drain circuitry, and shutting down the drivers by cutting off 
> the bias or the drive!  That would cause a huge inductive spike on the 
> drains.
>
> One shouldn't use more drain inductance than strictly necessary, AND 
> one should make sure to pull down the gates slowly enough so that the 
> drain overvoltage caused by that inductance remains manageable.
>
Yes, but according to frequency it is not easily manageable.
>> Before connecting your PWM modulator make a full DC sweep of your 
>> amplifier because I remember when we began to design with envelope 
>> tracking (not doing EER or Kahn but tracking few volts above the 
>> strictly necessary drain voltage; the amplifier being in class AB) 
>> the transistor was going into oscillation around 20V DC.
>> This mosfet (the same generation as the one you planed to use, but he 
>> was climbing to 900 MHz) went into oscillation when the bias was 
>> applied before drain voltage.
>> Usually the bias is applied when the drain voltage is about 80% under 
>> nominal value to prevent that, but here it is not possible.
>
> This point worries me a lot. I have seen a few (very few) previous 
> mentions of this LDMOSFET instability happening at low drain voltages, 
> and I have never found a good explanation for it. Do you happen to 
> know some more about this? I have seen amplifiers designed with bias 
> circuits that come on only when the drain supply voltage is above 80% 
> of nominal, but of course, as you say, I cannot do that. If a device 
> exhibits this form of instability, and if the instability is 
> internally caused and cannot be fixed by external feedback or other 
> external means, than that device simply can't be used in my project. 
> If this phenomenon affects all LDMOSFETs, then I can pack up and 
> redesign my project around a pair of 3-500Z...
>
HI ! the 3-500Z, great for peace of mind!

I don't remember I had seen exactly this with bipolars. What I have seen 
was low frequency oscillation (~ 500 kHz) during peak modulation when 
the antenna coupler was adjusted a narrow bandpass manner. This never 
killed the transistors when it arrived.

In a 1973 publication of CTC "Solid Circuits" they advice at initial 
amplifier turn-on to look for spurious responses at low frequencies and 
beginning at low voltages (I will add allways with current limiting). 
According to them the cause is high gain at low frequencies and a right 
impedance to make an oscillator. They sugested negative feedback and/or 
present a resistive impedance at low frequencies for input and output.
Polyfet have adapted parts of this document in their faq: 
http://www.polyfet.com/faq.htm
I cured such oscillation on a 200 MHz amp having a spurious at 5 MHz in 
replacing an SMD grid decoupling capacitor by a leaded one with a 
ferrite bead to broaden the supposed resonance. This case is generally 
lethal because spurious is outside of the output bandpass.
In the 2 LDMOS cases I saw, the oscillation was at a rather high 
frequency and the grid damping resistors used with older generations did 
nothing unless decreasing gain.
But perhaps you will not have to bother with that, it was with UHF 
amplifiers using LDMOS having around 20 dB gain.

I don't know why this happen.

>> I advice you to do the test using the current control of your power 
>> supply to sweep the all range voltage while controlling the stability.
>
> I will certainly do that.
>
>> Don't forget to design with the decoupling capacitors compatible with 
>> your PWM filter; you may decrease their values severely leading? 
>> perhaps to instabilities.
>
> Yes, I'm very aware of that. The last capacitor of the PWM filter is 
> actually the drain decoupling capacitor of my RF amp. Physically this 
> will be a row of roughly 20 ceramic capacitors, totalling slightly 
> under 1 microfarad, placed in extreme proximity to the drains and the 
> source return. I would like to use C0G/NP0 ceramic, but it's not too 
> easy to find in the necessary ratings, so the capacitors I have on 
> hand have X7R dielectric, with 100V rating, 1206 size. Do you have any 
> idea about their suitability in terms of RF current handling, and 
> capacitance stability when exposed to the modulated voltage? According 
> to what I can dig out of datasheets, they should be acceptable, and 
> some tests done by other hams seem to confirm that, but I haven't done 
> the final test myself yet.
>
I have not done that but it's worth to try but I would prefer the 1210 
package physically stronger they have less tendency to break if the PCB 
is bent a little.
> Since I cannot use high capacitances in the drain circuit, 
> low-frequency stability must come from negative feedback and from 
> resistive gate loading, both of which must remain effective down to 
> very low frequencies.
>
> Since I'm a crazy guy, I'm planning to put the drive and predriver on 
> the same board, for a total of nearly 60dB gain, and I want to see if 
> I can achieve stability... But I'm mentally prepared to cut the board 
> in two, if necessary! :-)
>
It must be possible with a good ground reference and a not too compact 
design (at the beginning). But the great modulating power could be a 
problem with  ground loops.
>> I think you will need some linearity correction mostly for low voltages.
>>> From 20 V to 50 V the linearity is fair.
>
> The good thing about integrating this amplifier into an SDR is that 
> linearity correction of both amplitude and phase, through adaptive 
> predistortion, is a part of the basic features of the SDR section. On 
> the hardware side it only requires feeding back a sample of the output 
> signal into one of the SDR's receivers. All the rest of the job is 
> done in software, and this software is available for free.
>
>> Concerning overdrive as I remember (5 to 6 years ago) in Digital TV 
>> (OFDM) there was around 6 dB clipping and RF peaks always around 2x 
>> Vd while? with adaptive linearity correction peaks were beyond vgs max!.
>
> On HF the gain of an LDMOSFET is higher, so one can have significant 
> overdrive without having to exceed Vgs max. If my calculations are 
> right, I will have at least 2V headroom between the absolute maximum 
> possible drive voltage peak plus bias, and the Vgsmax. Roughly the 
> same headroom, or a little more, with Vgsmin.
>
>> Due to fast acting, your primary protection MUST be hardware for SWR, 
>> over-voltage, over-current and overdrive or ALC. The microcontroller 
>> is for flavor and management of the slow events.
>
> It depends on how fast the protection really needs to be. If I use a 
> cheap PIC, like the PIC18F886 I have in stock because I use it in many 
> projects, then every 10-bit analog-digital conversion takes around 2 
> microseconds, and the processor can execute 5 instructions per 
> microsecond. AD conversion and CPU processing can run in parallel, but 
> an event like an antenna failure needs to propagate first through AD 
> conversion and then through processing. With a well-written program I 
> think I can get a reaction time of roughly 50 microseconds. That's of 
> course slower than what an analog circuit could do, but if 50 
> microseconds is fast enough, then I don't need the expensive analog 
> multipliers. Until recently I thought that even 200 microseconds was 
> fast enough, but the more I learn, the more I doubt...
>
> And I do not intend to use the microcontroller for flavor. I won't put 
> a display on it. If I use it, it will be a little black box hidden 
> deep in the circuit, doing a very basic slave job. Just the 
> computations required for the protection system. I don't think I will 
> need it for anything else, because the SDR does all the other 
> functions, including things like TX/RX sequencing.
>
>> Even the digital Icoms 7300, 7610 use direct analog control for ALC 
>> and SWR.
>
> But they don't compute SWR in the protection circuit, let alone 
> dissipation power!
>
>> Also, you can dig interesting informations here:
>>
>> http://www.highfrequencyelectronics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=47&Itemid=145 
>>
>> https://www.highfrequencyelectronics.com/Dec10/HFE1210_Brounley.pdf
>> http://www.highfrequencyelectronics.com/Apr04/HFE0404_Brounley.pdf
>> http://www.highfrequencyelectronics.com/Sep08/HFE0908_Grebennikov.pdf
>> http://www.highfrequencyelectronics.com/Jun10/HFE0610_Andrei_Part2.pdf
>> https://www.microsemi.com/document-portal/doc_view/133846-vswr-testing-of-rf-power-mosfets 
>>
>
> I did. Thanks!
>
>> And if you have classical amps and want to play with:
>> http://www.highfrequencyelectronics.com/Jun04/HFE0604_Gutierrez.pdf
>> At least it works with old Mosfets like BLF 278 in class AB
>
> Thanks to SDR, I don't need such a complex correction system.
>
>> I hope this helped you a little.
>
> Yes, it did! But I'm still looking for more information, specially for 
> detailed, hard data on LDMOSFET ruggedness, and body diode behaviour.
>
> Manfred
>
>
> ========================
> Visit my hobby homepage!
> http://ludens.cl
> ========================
Daniel, F6BRD
> _______________________________________________
> Amps mailing list
> Amps at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps