Design and Analysis of a Low Loss, Wideband Digital Step Attenuator With Minimized Amplitude and Phase Variations
- 4 May 2018
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits
- Vol. 53 (8) , 2202-2213
Abstract
A compact, low loss, wideband digital step attenuator (DSA) is presented. The proposed DSA utilizes amplitude/phase-compensated T-type attenuator cells, in which the locations of poles and zeros are manipulated for minimizing variations in attenuation and phase. In addition, the reduced T-type attenuator cells that eliminate series switch transistors are used to achieve low insertion loss (IL). These techniques provide wideband (dc-20 GHz) operation for the DSA, with significantly decreased attenuation/phase errors and reduced IL. The DSA was implemented in a 130-nm silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS platform. The full attenuator circuit has binary-coded 6-bit digital control inputs with a least significant bit of 0.5-dB attenuation. It has a root-mean-square (rms) attenuation error of 0.37 dB and an rms phase error of 4°, both at 20 GHz. The IL and the input 1-dB compression point at 10 GHz are 4 dB and 10 dBm, respectively. The active core layout area is 0.14 mm² 1.0 mm x 0.14 mm).Keywords
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