February 9, 2014. Texas Instruments has unveiled what it calls the industry’s fastest 16-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The 4-channel, 2.5-GS/s DAC38J84 supports the JEDEC JESD204B serial-interface standard for data converters up to 12.5 Gb/s. The pin-compatible 2-channel, 16-bit DAC38J82 also runs at 2.5 GS/s.
The DAC38J84 and DAC38J82 provide the bandwidth, performance, small footprint, and low power consumption needed for multi-mode 2G/3G/4G cellular base stations to migrate to more advanced technologies, such as LTE-Advanced and carrier aggregation on multiple antennas. The DACs support up to 2 GHz of information bandwidth for wideband power amplifier digital predistortion, millimeter-wave backhaul infrastructure, signal jamming, radar, and test equipment.
The DACs provide an input rate up to 1.23 GS/s per DAC. The DAC38J84 provides two independent transmit paths with up to 1 GHz of complex information bandwidth each. The DAC38J84 integrates a multiband summation block that allows two complex carrier blocks to be independently mixed to the desired frequency before being summed together for a single path complex transmit. This supports up to 2 GHz of information bandwidth from one pair of 2.5-GSPS output DACs.
The DAC37J84 consumes only 1,100 mW at the common wireless base station condition of 1.474 GS/s. At 2.458 GS/s, the DAC38J84 uses only 1,612 mW.
Evaluation modules (EVMs) are available to quickly evaluate the performance of the DACs.
www.ti.com/dac38j84-pr
