Peregrine Semiconductor has announced three new UltraCMOS® glitch-less RF digital step attenuators (DSAs)—the PE43711, PE43712 and PE43713. This next generation of glitch less attenuators feature an extended temperature range, a wider power supply, a faster switching speed, broader control logic support, increased ESD tolerance and, as the product name suggests, glitch-less attenuation state transitions.
When switching attenuation states with a DSA, there is a brief “glitch” or transient spike in output power. This glitch, if left alone, could lead to degraded signal quality and possible damage to power amplifier sub-assemblies. To minimize this glitch, engineers deploy a software or firmware workaround that reduces the effect of this transient spike. With Peregrine’s new glitch-less DSAs, this output power glitch is significantly reduced to less than 0.3 dB, enabling customers to decrease their engineering overhead and prevent damage to expensive sub-assemblies.
The PE43711 and PE43712 are designed for wireless-infrastructure devices, land-mobile-radio (LMR) applications and point-to-point communication systems; the PE43713 is ideally suited for test-and-measurement (T&M) applications.
Glitch-less RF Digital Step Attenuators Product Specification
The UltraCMOS® PE43711, PE43712 and PE43713 are 50-ohm, 7-bit DSAs that support a broad frequency range from 9 kHz to 6 GHz. They cover a 31.75 dB attenuation range with flexible attenuation steps of 0.25 dB, 0.5 dB and 1 dB. These DSAs are capable of maintaining 0.25 dB monotonicity through 4 GHz, 0.5 dB monotonicity through 5 GHz and 1 dB monotonicity through 6 GHz. They are also Pin-for-pin compatible with Peregrine’s legacy DSAs, the PE43711, PE43712 and PE43713 offer product specification improvements including an extended temperature range of -40 to 105-degrees Celsius, a wider power supply of 2.3 to 5.5V, a faster switching time of 275 ns, control logic support of both 1.8V and 3.3V, increased ESD tolerance of 3000V HBM and glitch-less attenuation state performance of less than 0.3 dB.
The PE43711 is offered in a 24-lead, 4 x 4 mm QFN package, while the PE43712 and PE43713 are packaged in a 32-lead 5 x 5 mm QFN. Volume production units, samples and evaluation kits are available now. For 10K quantity orders, each PE43711 is $2.60, each PE43712 is $2.80 and each PE43713 is $8.80.
