San Francisco, CA. Peregrine Semiconductor at IMS 2016 introduced two new high-frequency products, including the PE41901 image-reject mixer and the PE19601 monolithic phase and amplitude controller (MPAC) for beamforming.
Kinana Hussain, director of marketing, provided an overview of Peregrine, which now has more than 440 employees worldwide, 40% of whom are engineers. The company, a division of Murata and headquartered in San Diego, serves more than 4,000 global customers, including a variety of test-and-measurement companies such as Advantest, Anritsu, National Instruments, Keysight Technologies, Rohde & Schwarz, and Teradyne.
Hussain said that with the UltraCMOS silicon-in-insulator platform, Peregrine focuses on high frequency (extending to the Ka band), high linearity, and intelligent integration.
A new example in the high-frequency area is the 10- to 19-GHz UltraCMOS PE41901 image-reject mixer for, Hussain said, test-and-measurement, point-to-point microwave-link, and VSAT (very small aperture terminal)-block-upconverter applications.
Image reject mixers provide an integrated phase-canceling capability by removing the unwanted image signal from the output. This type of mixer reduces the number and complexity of the filters required in a system, resulting in minimized board space and design effort. Hussain described the PE41901 as Peregrine’s first image-reject mixer and its first mixer at high frequencies.
The company also introduced the UltraCMOS PE19601, a monolithic phase and amplitude controller (MPAC) solution for beamforming. Hussain described the device as representing both Peregrine’s high-frequency and intelligent integrations capabilities, embracing analog processing with digital programmability on a single monolithic chip.
The new MPAC beamforming device covers a frequency range of 8 to 12 GHz. It is designed for X-band radar applications including active electronically scanned array (AESA) weather, air-traffic control and military radar.
Another example of intelligent integration, Hussain said, is the company’s MPAC Doherty products (including the PE46120 1.8- to 2.2-GHz device, PE46130 2.3- to 2.7-GHz device, and PE46140 3.4- to 3.8-GHz device), which integrate RF and digital functions on a single die and are suitable for use with GaN power amplifiers.
And as for high linearity, Hussain cited the PE42723 RF switch for DOCSIS 3.1 applications, which enables cable customer premises equipment vendors to meet the strict linearity requirements of the DOCSIS 3.1 standard.
