Vaunix, a leading provider of portable and programmable RF/microwave test devices, has announced the release of a range of solid-state digital attenuators designed for Wi-Fi 6 applications. The attenuators are designed to operate from 200 MHz to 8 GHz covering a wide range of applications including the newly introduced Wi-Fi 6 applications that operate in the 6 GHz band.
As Wi-Fi continues to carry an exponentially growing amount of internet traffic, industry insiders felt that existing bandwidth of less than 600 MHz (70 MHz in the 2.4 GHz band, 500 MHz in the 5 GHz band) was not enough to handle the increase in traffic that Wi-Fi was seeing. To address this, the Wi-Fi alliance added 1200 MHz with the introduction of the 6 GHz Band and Wi-Fi 6/Wi-Fi 6E earlier this year.
Vaunix’s Lab Brick design team has been following this trend and agrees that the 6 GHz band and its 1,200 MHz of contiguous spectrum can fulfill the growth requirements, and this is why they are launching a new suite of products in this band with specific features for this market.
To address this, Vaxnix introduced the LDA-802EH Lab Brick Attenuator. This solid-state, rugged, and yet low-cost ($875) 50 Ohm step attenuator is a bi-directional RF attenuation solution offering an optimal 120 dB of attenuation control across its entire bandwidth up to 8 GHz. It also offers an impressive 0.1 dB step size.
The LDA-802EH is powered and programmed by a USB connection. (Ethernet control available by request.) USB Lab Bricks use a native USB HID interface to avoid the difficulties inherent in using older serial or IEEE-488 interfaces implemented over USB. As a result, users can get to work faster without having to install kernel level drivers and can work within any environment that supports USB HID devices, including low cost embedded computers using Linux or similar operating systems. Test technicians wishing to develop their own interface, can utilize Vaunix’s included LabVIEW drivers, Windows API DLL files, Linux drivers, macOS SDK examples, and more.
These portable and programmable RF/microwave test devices have been designed to suit the high-speed data requirements of Wi-Fi 6 but also meet the challenging requirements of MIMO testing applications and a variety of IoT, 3G, 4G, 5G, LTE, and DVB system applications, and microwave radio simulators. They are easily programmed for fixed attenuation or swept attenuation ramps/fading profiles directly from the included Graphical User Interface (GUI).
These portable, hand-held units can also be packaged as a single rack unit for ATE stands. Custom engineering for additional electrical and mechanical specifications is also available.
For RF/microwave test technicians requiring multi-port test configurations, Vaunix also offers a 4-port LDA-802Q for $2,995 and an 8 port LDA-802-8 for $3,999. Each offers the same electrical performance and frequency coverage as the LDA-802EH. These models also offer an Ethernet connectivity option.
Click here to see Vaunix Programmable Step Attenuators on everything RF.
