A new method to extract parasitic capacitances and inductances for high electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) is proposed in this paper. Compared with the conventional extraction method, the depletion layer is modeled as a physically significant capacitance model and the extrinsic values obtained are much closer to the actual results. In order to simulate the high frequency behaviour with higher precision, series parasitic inductances are introduced into the cold pinch-off model which is used to extract capacitances, at low frequency and the reactive elements can be determined simultaneously over the measured frequency range. The values obtained by this method can be used to establish a 16-elements small-signal equivalent circuit model under different bias conditions. The results show good agreements between the simulated and measured scattering parameters up to 30 GHz. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.