The PE43711 from Peregrine Semiconductor is a glitch-less digital step attenuator that operates from 9 kHZ to 6 GHz. This DSA has been designed for wireless-infrastructure devices, land-mobile-radio (LMR) applications and point-to-point communication systems. The attenuator has an attenuation range from 0 dB to 31.75 dB with a 1 dB step resolution and can handle up to 23 dBm of power. It has an insertion loss under 2.8 dB and maintains 0.25 dB monotonicity through 4 GHz, 0.5 dB monotonicity through 5 GHz and 1 dB monotonicity through 6 GHz. It is available in 24L QFN package and measures 4 x 4 mm. When switching attenuation states with a DSA, there is a brief 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.
