THAs enable high-bandwidth instruments

GigaTrack high frequency track-and-hold amplifiers are selected by Wavecrest as a fundamental building block for its sophisticated family of signal integrity analysis instruments.

Inphi Corporation's recently launched GigaTrack family of high frequency track-and-hold amplifiers (THAs) has been selected by Wavecrest as a fundamental building block for its sophisticated family of signal integrity analysis (SIA) solutions, beginning with its SIA-4000.

Wavecrest's test equipment is used to analyse serial data communication and clock signals for a wide variety of applications.

The SIA-4000 tests serial data applications with speeds up to 12.5Gbit/s including applications such as PCI ExpressTM Gen 2, FB DIMM, 8x Fibre Channel and OC-192 Sonet.

"This new architectural component delivers the high bandwidth functionality we need to meet the stringent demands of our customers across a wide range of applications and markets, and provides functionality that was not previously available", said Dennis Petrich, Senior Vice President of Wavecrest.

"The performance, availability, and quality of these parts have also led us to incorporate them as key components in our future product development".

The high bandwidth capability of Inphi's 1821TH-S01BGA THAs enables Wavecrest's SIA-4000 to perform high bandwidth sampling of signals under test in high datarate applications as well as high frequency clock and PLL applications.

"Wavecrest's decision to integrate Inphi's GigaTrack THAs throughout their SIA product line underscores the industry's rapid acceptance of these devices as the new standard in speed and high bandwidth performance among track-and-hold devices", said Kevin Nary, Vice President of Engineering at Inphi Corporation.

"The tremendously positive response to these products from the engineering community clearly emphasises that the GigaTrack family fills a crucial need for high bandwidth and higher sample rates".

The combined bandwidth, sample rate and linearity of the GigaTrack THAs allow direct conversion and software-defined receivers and advance the state-of-the-art in high sample rate test and measurement equipment.

These unparalleled parts are specifically designed to meet the needs of engineers designing next generation instrumentation, ATE, and military equipment.

Fast sampling oscilloscopes, direct conversion receivers in radios, radar or electronic warfare systems, demand wider-bandwidth and higher sample rate analogue-to-digital conversion.

For the first time, using the GigaTrack THAs engineers can replace numerous components in traditional heterodyne receiver architectures with a THA and a high sample rate ADC.

The resulting receivers are lower power and more compact than traditional heterodyne receivers, and provide far more flexibility.

With these THAs signal processing (ie down-conversion or channelising) that was "hard-wired" in heterodyne receivers, can be performed digitally and can be "software defined".

A direct conversion receiver can serve multiple applications with system differentiation occurring in software or firmware.

The new GigaTrack family consists of four track-and-hold amplifiers with 2Gsample/s sample rates.

The 49-pin ball-grid-array versions offer 18GHz (small signal) and 15GHz (0.5V peak-peak) input analogue bandwidths with very fast settling times (better than 60ps) and low power consumption (1.3W).

Plastic QFN versions provide 13GHz analogue bandwidth (100mV peak-peak).

The GigaTrack track-and-holds operate from a single -5.2 V power supply and dissipate only 1.3W.

The GigaTrack family supports all popular, broadband analogue-to-digital ADC devices including National Semiconductor ADC08100/81500, Atmel AT84AS003/008, ADI 9480, Maxim/Dallas MAX104/108, and others.

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