Understanding Thermal Analysis of RF Devices

Thermal design and analysis are critical to improving component reliability. This document provides information related to thermal analysis and functionality for Qorvo® products and their applications. It outlines the basics of thermal design, such as resistive analysis, for Qorvo components in customer applications and describes details to assist engineers with their system-level design.

From an environmental perspective, temperature is the biggest reason most semiconductors fail in their field application. This can be due to a harsh operating environment without adequate protections built in at the system level, which in turn can result from an incomplete understanding of the thermal aspects of semiconductor devices, packaging, layout and heat sinking. In addition, thermal measurements on RF devices at design verification can be a bit tricky. In this document we will break down the many aspects of temperature and design for RF semiconductor product applications. The goal is to help you design easier, faster and more reliably, so your systems do not break down due to thermal issues.