Large Signal Analysis of the Infrared Semiconductor Mercury-Cadmium-Telluride Detectors

Abstract

A mathematical model for the relationship between the output voltage and incident radiation of the infrared semiconductor mercury-cadmium-telluride (MCT) detector is presented. The model, basically a sine-series function, can easily yield closedform expressions for the harmonic and intermodulation performance of the MCT detector with large-amplitude multisinusoidal incident radiation. The special case of two-tone equalamplitude incident radiation is considered in detail. The results show that the second-order harmonic and intermodulation products are always higher than the third-order components. Moreover, the results show that the second-order intermodulation is always dominant.