M/A-COM, a division of AMP Incorporated and a leading global provider of wireless radio frequency (RF), microwave and millimeter wave components, announced the availability of a new 4-bit, 15 dB MMIC digital attenuator in a low-cost TSSOP-16 surface mount plastic package. The AT-226 is designed to adjust RF signal levels in wireless systems.

The AT-226 MMIC digital attenuator is suited for products requiring high attenuation accuracy, very low power consumption and low intermodulation distortion. It is well suited for use in gain and level control circuits in wireless telephony, wireless LAN equipment and GPS receivers. Key attributes of the AT-226 include CMOS compatible, single, positive control voltages and high attenuation accuracy.

Some the simplest, most effective products come from the strangest of sources. If anyone had asked me to bet where a breakthrough in digital attenuators would come from it wouldn't have been from M/A-COM. Which shows the company was thinking a lot smarter than I thought, and others companies are not thinking far enough ahead. The market for an accurate, precise, digital RF attenuator is massive. The development of a product that requires only a single, positive supply rail which is also CMOS-compatible for the control levels is a dream in the making for the designer who needs to interface an attenuator as simply as possible in a design.

The power consumption of the AT-226 is also extremely low. The part will find its way into numerous production devices for the consumer, the prosumer and the professional but it will also find its way into test equipment and will be used built into a discrete box -- just by itself with controls and supply -- for a lot of test benches in various guises.

The AT-226 is in production and, as noted, is in a 16-pin TSSOP.