Peregrine upgrades industry-leading RF digital step attenuator

Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., founder of RF SOI (silicon on insulator) and pioneer of advanced RF solutions, introduces its next-generation, UltraCMOS PE4312 DSA. Successor to the popular PE4302 – which boasts more than 35 million units shipped since its introduction – the new PE4312 enables flexible, wide dynamic-range network-infrastructure designs that require highly accurate and efficient amplitude control. This DSA upgrade is ideally suited for wireless-infrastructure devices, broadband consumer and infrastructure equipment, land mobile radios (LMRs), test-and-measurement equipment and military RF applications.

“Peregrine created the category of digital step attenuators with the UltraCMOS PE4302, and today’s announcement of our next-generation DSA will enable us to preserve our market leadership as the DSA category demands evolve,” says Kinana Hussain, senior marketing manager at Peregrine. “Based on customer requests, the UltraCMOS PE4312 features an extended temperature range that enable RF engineers to simplify thermal design, wider power-supply range to enable flexible power-supply routing, 1.8 V-compatible control voltage levels to enable lower-power designs and higher ESD ratings to ease manufacturing flow.”

UltraCMOS PE4312 Sets New Performance Bar for DSAs

Peregrine’s PE4312 is the only DSA on the market to meet a low insertion loss of 2.1 dB at 4 GHz at any power-supply level between 2.3 V and 5.5 V. It also handles the industry’s widest temperature range between -40 and 105 degrees Celsius and supports both 1.8 V and 3 V control logic. In addition, the PE4312 offers several improvements over PE4302 in attenuation accuracy ±(0.15 + 2% of attenuation setting), linearity (IIP3 of 59 dBm) and switching speed (500 ns). Finally, the PE4312 features a novel architecture to provide safe attenuation-state-transition behavior, which prevents positive power spikes that occur during attenuation-state changes when RF input power is applied. This feature simplifies the digital-interface design, improves signal quality and prevents damage to power amplifier sub-assemblies.

DSAs Improve Performance of Devices in Many Markets

Based on increasing RF-performance demands, Peregrine’s DSAs deliver substantial benefits to wireless-infrastructure devices, broadband TV modems, LMRs, test-and-measurement equipment and military RF applications. Peregrine DSAs are in multiband, RF-infrastructure applications and deliver power control in distributed antenna systems; gain control for optical repeaters in wireless-infrastructure devices; signal conditioning in broadband equipment; and amplitude conditioning in test-and-measurement equipment and LMRs.

Features, Packaging, Pricing and Availability

Peregrine’s PE4312 is a 50-ohm, 6-bit RF DSA with a 31.5 dB attenuation range in 0.5 dB steps. It maintains high linearity of +59 dBm IIP3 and monotonicity from 1 MHz through 4 GHz. Pin-for-pin compatible with the PE4302, the PE4312 DSA features multiple programming modes, including serial, direct parallel, and latched parallel, making it easy to design it into a wide range of systems. The PE4312 has high, monotonic attenuation performance of 0.5 dB up to 4 GHz, which improves instrument sensitivity and performance. Fast switching time of 500 nanoseconds improves system response times. ESD protection of 1.5 kV HBM eases manufacturing and prolongs the life of the end product. The 1.8 V and 3 V control logic support makes it easy to integrate the DSA with the latest FPGAs. High integration in a single package eliminates the need for the discrete components and bias circuits that are required with pin-diode solutions, further easing design and reducing board space. The PE4312 also features an external negative supply option. Its packaging is RoHS compliant, 20-lead QFN, and it measures 4 x 4 mm. Samples and volume-production parts are available now and priced at $1.52 each in 10K-quantity orders. Evaluation kit boards are $150. For more detail, view the PE4312 press kitfor images and datasheet.