50W limiters are industry’s first limiter ICs made on RF silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) wafer fab process
Richardson RFPD Inc. announced the availability and full design support capabilities for two new power limiter ICs from Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation.
The new devices are HaRP™ technology-enhanced RF power limiters with symmetric RF ports that limit incident power up to 50W pulsed in both biased and unbiased conditions. They offer wideband frequency range, maximum power handling of +47 dBm pulsed (50W) and +40 dBm CW (10W), power limiting and power reflecting operation modes, and an extremely fast limiting response to undesired high power signals while delivering low insertion loss and high linearity under safe operating power levels.
Unlike traditional PIN diode solutions, Peregrine’s new limiters allow the limiting threshold to be adjusted through a low current control voltage (VCTRL), eliminating the need for external components such as DC blocking capacitors, RF choke inductors, and bias resistors.
The new wideband limiters are manufactured on Peregrine’s UltraCMOS® process, a patented variation of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology on a sapphire substrate, offering the performance of GaAs with the economy and integration of conventional CMOS.
They are offered in 3 mm x 3 mm, 12-lead QFN packages and are designed for use in a range of high-performance power limiting applications, including tactical and military communications receivers, land mobile radio, test and measurement equipment, radar, military electronic counter measure receivers, and wireless infrastructure transceivers and antennas.
According to Peregrine, additional key features of the PE45140 and PE45450 include:
Wideband frequency range:
o PE45140: 20 MHz to 2 GHz
o PE45450: 9 kHz to 6 GHz
Input IP3
o PE45140: +64 dBm (VCTRL = -2.5V @ 915 MHz)
o PE45450: +70 dBm (VCTRL = -2.5V @ 915 MHz), +60 dBm (VCTRL = -2.5V @ 6 GHz)
Adjustable power limiting threshold:
o PE45140: from +22 dBm to +32 dBm
o PE45450: from +25 dBm to +35 dBm
Superior ESD rating and ESD protection
o PE45140: 8 kV HBM, 1 kV CDM, 200V MM
o PE45450: 8 kV HBM, 1 kV CDM, 600V MM
Fast response and recovery time of 1 ns
