Wireless handheld equipment: Low-power direct digital synthesis IC

Norwood, MA —

. expanded its direct digital synthesis technology into battery-powered industrial, communications and defense electronics applications with the

, a low-power, low-cost direct digital synthesizer (DDS) integrated circuit (IC) specifically designed for wireless, handheld equipment. It is said to be the first DDS to use only 50 mW of power at a 250 MHz clock rate. It’s under $5 each in volume, company says.

Analog Devices says the IC is ideal for portable barcode scanners, radar detectors, remote radio controls and other handheld products that require a cost-effective combination of performance and low-power operation.

“Unlike phase-locked loop (PLL) devices, which suffer from settling times measured in microseconds and fine-tuning limitations,” Analog Devices explains, “the AD9913 settles in nanoseconds with granularity well below 10 mHz. Other approaches, including field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) with embedded DDS functions, have difficulty matching its >80-dB spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) performance on a 100-MHz output signal while requiring higher operating power and a separate digital-to-analog converter (DAC) to synthesize the sine wave.”

pplication, such as an unmanned aircraft, this means the operator is less likely to lose contact with the airplane due to frequency interference.

“Larger systems like wireless base stations and test and measurement equipment have been taking advantage of the higher operating-frequency ranges, faster linear frequency hopping and other performance benefits of DDS technology for the better part of a decade,” said Kevin Kattmann, product line director of High-Speed Signal Processing, Analog Devices. “Designers of battery-powered devices can now incorporate the same faster switching speeds, fine frequency resolutions and broader frequency spectrum into their products with no price or power penalty,” he adds.

The AD9913 is available in full production quantities at $4.65 per unit in 100,000-unit quantities, and is available in a 32-lead LFCSP (lead-frame chip-scale package), the company said in a Dec. 10 announcement.

Analog Devices Inc .

—Edited by Mark T. Hoske, editor in chief
Control Engineering Products
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