DIDACTIC PACKAGE FOR GAAS MMIC DESIGN AND CHARACTERIZATION

Gallium Arsenide Monolithic Integrated Circuits belong to a growing se gment of the Electronics market. This technology is now accessible to system manufacturers and laboratories through the multi-chip projects available from the industrials foundries. This paper presents a cohere nt and didactic package, easy to implement, suitable for giving a theo retical and practical training to the laboratories which plan to take part in these projects. The proposed teaching methodology is applied t o four basic topics : MMIC technology, circuit measurements and compon ents characterisation, component modelling and MMIC design. Each of th e three last items is an independent module including a lecture (event ually linked to a dedicated conference), and an associated workshop. T he lecture brings a theoretical and technological background. A worksh op is based on CAD tools developed on the HP-MDS software from Hewlett -Packard under UNIX environment. These tools consist of a set of progr essive exercises contained in a file and documented by a booklet (user 's guide). Finally the problem of knowledge transfer towards the publi c or private laboratories is also approached.