Stability Analysis of Non-Foster Circuit Using Normalized Determinant Function

Non-Foster elements are highly desired to overcome the bandwidth limit of electrically small antennas, cloaking, and metamaterials. However, they are prone to be unstable and thus it is quite challenging to implement non-Foster circuits in practice. Hence a rigorous and effective method of analyzing the stability should always be the priority when designing a non-Foster network. This paper applies normalized determinant function to analyze the stability of non-Foster circuits. A floating-version negative capacitor based on Linvill's negative impedance converter is taken as the example. Factors affecting the stability in the practical design are thoroughly investigated, including device parasitics, dc biasing, distributed transmission line in the layout and load impedance. Circuit parameters are substituted with practical values to reduce the complexity of calculation. Finally, experiments are conducted to verify the analysis.