Peregrine Ships Industry's First True DC Switch
Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., founder of RF SOI (silicon on insulator) and pioneer of advanced RF solutions, has announced the availability of the UltraCMOS PE42020, which the company c;aims is the industry's first and only RF integrated switch to operate at true DC, zero Hz.
This True DC RF switch features high power handling and maintains excellent RF performance and linearity from DC through 8000 MHz. A reliable alternative to problematic mechanical relays and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), the PE42020 is ideal for test-and-measurement (T&M) and automated-test-equipment (ATE) applications.
"For the first time, an integrated RF switch can operate at DC and truly cover the signal over the entire frequency spectrum," says Kinana Hussain, Peregrine's senior manager of marketing. "Until now, only mechanical relays and MEMS switches allowed DC pass through, and these products are plagued with reliability issues and lack of integration. Today's release of the UltraCMOS PE42020 is another example of Peregrine solving the RF industry's biggest challenges."
Peregrine's UltraCMOS technology enables intelligent integration, a capability of integrating RF, digital and analog functions onto a monolithic die. The True DC RF switch integrates high performance RF switching, analog DC tracking and digital control logic and impedance control on a single chip. By integrating these functions, RF engineers gain many benefits, including greater system capability, improved performance, a smaller form factor, reliability and flexibility.
