Transient Voltage Suppressor Diode Array Protection Circuits with Reducing Loading Effect under High-Power Microwave Pulse Injection

This article aims to design transient voltage suppressor (TVS) diode array protection circuits under high-power microwave (HPM) pulse injection to protect sensitive semiconductor and microwave devices from interfered or even damaged by intentionally electromagnetic interference. First of all, conductivity modulation with charge dependent resistors is added into original nonlinear large signal TVS diode model provided by Infineon and simulated results by improved model are compared with measured results obtained by transmission line pulse measurement. Next, due to the fact that the capacitance of the TVS diode degrades RF performances of the protected device, a transmission line (TL) connecting with the TVS diode is designed to improve the S-parameters. Subsequently, design procedures of circuits with multiple discharge paths of TVS diodes are summarized. Based on above these two points, four protection circuits are proposed and tested under HPM measurement system. The highest overshoot protection ratio of these circuits is approximately 16.5-22 dB when the input HPM pulse power ranges from 50 to 63 dBm. Through simulated and measured results, couple microstrip TLs and effect of TL inductance on overshoot PRs are investigated.