Circuit modeling and performance analysis of photoconductive antenna

In recent years, several experimental and simulation studies have been reported on the terahertz (THz) generation using a photoconductive antenna (PCA). The major problem with PCA is its low overall efficiency, which depends on several parameters related to a semiconductor material, an antenna geometry, and characteristics of the laser beam. To analyze the effect of different parameters on PCA efficiency, accurate circuit modeling, using physics undergoing in the device, is necessary. Although a few equivalent circuit models have been proposed in the literature, these models do not adequately capture the semiconductor physics in PCA. This paper presents an equivalent electrical circuit model of PCA incorporating basic semiconductor device physics. The proposed equivalent circuit model is validated using Sentaurus TCAD device level modeling tool as well as with the experimental results available in the literature. The results obtained from the proposed circuit model are in close agreement with the TCAD results as well as available experimental results. The proposed circuit model is expected to contribute towards future research efforts aimed at optimization of the performance of the PCA system.