Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., a supplier of high performance RF CMOS and mixed-signal communications ICs, released three new 7-bit UltraCMOS™ Digital Step Attenuators to complement its 50-Ohm DSA line. Building on its high performance predecessors, along with flexible Serial and Parallel interface logic, these new HaRP™-enhanced devices also offer an unprecedented serial-addressable control interface that allows the user to control up to eight different DSAs using a common 3-wire interface bus. The new trio offers highly flexible attenuation options by covering a 31.75 dB attenuation range in 0.25, 0.5 or 1 dB steps.

The PE43701, PE32702 and PE43703 DSAs offer best-in-class linearity with input IP3 of +57 dBm, outstanding attenuation accuracy of +/- 0.20 + 2 percent of attenuation setting at 3 GHz and low Insertion Loss of 1.6 dB (typical). As with all UltraCMOS silicon-on-sapphire RFICs, there is no gate lag to settling time nor phase shift, making them ideal for next-generation communication systems such as cellular base stations, repeaters, femtocells and power amplifier distortion cancelling loops. In particular, the PE43703 DSA delivers unprecedented settling time making it ideal for test and measurement applications and a perfect complement to Peregrine’s recently introduced PE42552 RF switch.

These new 50-Ohm DSAs have an operating frequency range of near DC up to 6 GHz, with exceptional low frequency performance, superior noise immunity and outstanding ESD tolerance of 2.0 kV HBM. They work with two typical supply voltages of 3.3 or 5 V with low power consumption, allowing the use of a single device in both the RF and IF radio sections to save board space.