Articles on Attenuators

A tutorial on rf attenuator design from rfic.co.uk. Attenuators are devices used to adjust signal levels, to control impedance mismatch and to isolate circuit stages.

Mini-Circuits new series of digital step attenuators (DAT family) manufactured using Super RF CMOS technology, has an unprecedented combination of accuracy, linearity, programmability, ESD tolerance, and wide bandwidth in a small 4×4×0.9 mm surface mount package. This attenuator family includes models requiring only a single positive or positive-negative supply voltage. The suppl...

This Whitepaper goes over the design of a 110 dB, 10 MHz to 8 GHz, Electronic Step Attenuator for Fast Switching Microwave Signal Generators.

This article describes the general design mythology of RF CMOS Attenuators covering Step, pi, T and Bridged Circuits. It also goes over attenuator optimization.

A RF CMOS digital step attenuators that offer an unprecedented combination of accuracy, linearity, programmability, ESD tolerance and wide bandwidth in aminiature surface-mount package.

Attenuators are passive resistive elements that do the opposite of amplifiers, they kill gain. Why would you want to do that? Suppose your design specification calls for 10 dB gain, with a 1.2:1 maximum VSWR. You search the amplifier vendors, and locate an amplifier in your frequency band, but it has 14.5 dB gain and a lousy 2.5:1 match on the input. By adding an attenuator to the input, you...

The PIN diode is used as a current controlled resistance component in the PI network. PIN diodes are low-cost, low distortion elements available in commonly used small-size plastic packages. This application note describes the design of a high performance, PIN based 4 diode PI attenuator utilizing the low-cost SMP1307-011 diode in a plastic SOD-323 package. Performance is characte...

This is a short FAQ on Electronic Attenuators by Minicircuits.