In this paper, a comprehensive evaluation of the transient self-heating in microwave heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) have been carried out through simulations and measurements. Three dimensional thermal TCAD simulations have been performed to investigate precisely the influence of backend metallization on transient thermal behavior of a submicron SiGe:C BiCMOS technology with f(T) and f(max) of 230 GHz and 290 GHz, respectively. Transient variation of Collector current caused by self-heating is obtained through pulse measurements. For thermal characterization, different electro-thermal networks have been employed at the temperature node of HiCuM compact model. Thermal parameters have been extracted by means of compact model simulation using a scalable transistor library. It has been shown that, the conventional R-C thermal network is not sufficient to accurately model the transient thermal spreading behavior and therefore a recursive network needs to be used. Recursive network is verified with device simulations as well as measurements and found to be in excellent agreement. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.