The design and optimization of electronic systems often requires an appraisal of the electrical noise generated by active devices. The rapid development of silicon RF applications has recently fostered the interest toward low-noise silicon devices for the lower microwaves band, such as low-noise MOS transistors; at the same time, the RF and microwave ranges are becoming increasingly important in fast optical communication systems. Thus, high-frequency noise modeling and simulation of both silicon and compound-semiconductor based field-effect transistors can be considered as an important and timely topic. This does not exclude, of course, low-frequency noise, which is relevant also in the RF and microwave ranges whenever it is up-converted within a nonlinear system. Some existing noise models are very simple due to the absence of velocity saturation and hot electron effects and cannot predict accurately the high-frequency noise performance of MOSFETs. Other models, though both effects being considered, are not very analytical or very complex because of the complicated expressions of the electrical field along the channel. Moreover, there are so many types of noises for MOSFETs, such as flicker (1/f) noise, generation-recombination (GR) noise and thermal noise, etc. Hence, there are many challenges and opportunities for exploring and developing compact noise models, which is important for the development of the accurate and truly physical compact model for circuit simulation.

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