Peregrine RF Switch Sets Linearity Record
RF silicon on insulator (SOI) company Peregrine Semiconductor has announced a new high linearity UltraCMOS RF switch for DOCSIS 3.1.
An upgraded version of the PE42722, the new switch offers enhanced performance in a smaller package. Like its predecessor, the PE42723 exceeds the linearity requirements of the DOCSIS 3.1 cable industry standard and enables a dual upstream/downstream band architecture in cable customer premises equipment (CPE) devices.
"Our UltraCMOS technology enables Peregrine to solve the world's biggest RF challenges. We answered the cable industry's call with the PE42722 and took the challenge to the next level with the PE42723 - the highest linearity device on the market today," says Kinana Hussain, director of marketing at Peregrine Semiconductor. "No other company can compete with Peregrine on linearity."
The cable industry faces the challenge of supporting the consumer's increasing demand for more high-speed home data. As predicted in the Cisco Visual Networking Index (VNI), 5 million years of video content will cross the internet each month in 2019. This estimate means nearly a million minutes of video will be streamed or downloaded every second.
To keep up with consumer demand, the cable industry announced the DOCSIS 3.1 standard in Oct. 2013 offering multi-gigabit throughput. The standard set an ambitious goal for the industry, and one of the toughest challenges was to support the new linearity requirements and harmonics.
"DOCSIS 3.1 represents a giant leap forward in achieving multi-gigabit data rates," says Jim Koutras, director of product management at MaxLinear. "With their exceptional linearity, Peregrine's PE42722 and PE42723 RF switches simplify the transition from DOCSIS 3.0 to 3.1. The ability to support dual upstream/downstream bands in the same CPE device is a critical enabler to making DOCSIS 3.1 a reality."
Before the introduction of the PE42722 in 2013, no switch had met the linearity requirements necessary to support adual upstream/downstream band architecture, according to Peregrine. To create this architecture, the switch is placed directly at the cable modem (CM) F-connector before the filters and must comply with the stringent DOCSIS 3.1 CM spurious emissions requirements of -50 dBmV. Such a low spurious level requires the switch harmonic performance to be greater than -115 dBc. The PE42722 and PE42723 are the only RF switches available today that can achieve these high harmonic requirements.
Covering a frequency range of 5-1794 MHz, the UltraCMOS PE42723 is a reflective SPDT RF switch. At 17 MHz, the second harmonic is -121dBc and the third harmonic is -140 dBc. The switch's low insertion loss, 0.3dB at 1218MHz, preserves noise figure and receiver sensitivity and achieves superior signal quality, along with providing high isolation of 54 dB at 204 MHz. The PE42723 features 3 kV ESD protection on all pins.
