‘Industry's first’ fully programmable analogue/digital vga
Maxim has introduced the MAX2062, the 'industry's first' high linearity, dual analogue/digital variable gain amplifier (vga) designed for multipath receiver and transmitter applications.
The device operates in the 50 to 1000MHz frequency range with two independent attenuators in each signal path. According to Maxim, each digital attenuator is controlled as a slave peripheral using either the SPI, a compatible interface, or a 5bit parallel bus with 31dB total adjustment range in 1dB steps.
The device is said to allow rapid fire gain selection among each of the four steps,preprogrammed by the user through the SPI compatible interface. A separate 2pin control has been implemented to let the user access any one of four customised attenuation states without reprogramming the SPI bus. Each analogue attenuator is said to be controlled using an external voltage or through the SPI compatible interface using an on chip 8bit DAC.
