Peregrine Semiconductor will be displaying its new line of UltraCMOS® RF power limiters at the EDI CON in China. This includes the PE45140 and PE45450 slated for release in May. Peregrine’s power limiters represent the industry’s first turnkey, monolithic solutions to provide an alternative to discrete, PIN-diode limiters based on gallium arsenide (GaAs). UltraCMOS power limiters deliver simple, repeatable and reliable protection ideal for test-and-measurement, land-mobile-radio (LMR), wireless-infrastructure, military and radar systems.
Turnkey Monolithic Architecture Delivers Unprecedented Benefits
On a chip eight times smaller than the board space required by discrete, PIN-diode solutions, Peregrine’s new power limiters provide a 10-100X improvement in response and recovery time; and deliver greater than 40 dB improvement in linearity (IP3); offer a 20X improvement in ESD (electrostatic discharge) protection.
Of particular interest to RF designers, Peregrine’s power limiters save PCB space with a small form factor; reduce BoM (bill of materials) by eliminating the need for extra components; and improve time to market by reducing in-design time and costs. They also beat existing solutions in RF performance, including higher linearity to eliminate signal distortion, high ESD to ensure high reliability, wide bandwidth to enable design flexibility and fast response and recovery times to ensure robust protection of power-sensitive components. Finally, because Peregrine’s power limiters are based on UltraCMOS instead of GaAs, they can be closely integrated with other UltraCMOS RF components.
This table illustrates how Peregrine’s new UltraCMOS power limiters compare to GaAs-based PIN diode solutions:
| Attributes | UltraCMOS Power Limiter | GaAS PIN Diode Power Limiters |
| Small form factor | Yes | No |
| Requires no external components | Yes | No |
| Superior ESD rating | Yes | No |
| Adjustable limiting threshold | Yes | No |
| Power reflection mode | Yes | No |
| Protection in unpowered conditions | Yes | Yes |
| Excellent linearity | Yes | No |
| Sub-nanosecond response time | Yes | No |
| Wide bandwidth support | Yes | No |
| High power handling | Yes | Yes |
| Low insertion loss | Yes | Yes |
Peregrine’s UltraCMOS power limiters can protect:
- RF ports in test-and-measurement equipment
- RF front ends and low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) in LMRs
- RF receivers in wireless-infrastructure equipment
- Tactical radio receivers from intentional jammers in military warfare
- Transceiver (TRX) modules in radar systems
In order to achieve repeatable and reliable power protection, customers currently face challenges because it takes so long to design and validate PIN-diode power-limiter circuits and the multiple external components this architecture requires. With Peregrine’s new, all-in-one architecture, customers will be able to significantly reduce time to market and cost.
Availability
- The Limiters can be seen at Booth Booth #512 at EDI CON.
- The PE45140 is a 20 MHz - 2GHz, 50 W power limiter designed for professional portable and mobile radios, such as tactical radios and LMRs, as well as HF, VHF, UHF, L-band radar transceivers.
- The PE45450 is a 9KHz - 6GHz, 50 W power limiter designed for test-and-measurement systems, L/S/C-band radar transceivers, counter-measure receivers and wireless receivers.
Both power limiters feature an adjustable limiting threshold, unbiased power limiting and operation in two modes – power limiting or power reflecting.
