Explore some of the highest performing RF PLLs from Analog Devices. With over 80 unique devices, Analog Devices has the industry’s most comprehensive RF PLL portfolio with a solution ideal for your application. Watch the video and learn more.
Tell me about Analog Devices PLLVCO portfolio.
Analog Devices has been producing high performance PLLs since 2003. We have over 80 unique parts, both discrete PLLs and PLLs with integrated VCOs, covering frequencies from DC to 18 GHz – the widest frequency range in the industry. In our PLLVCOs, the integrated VCO increases output bandwidth while dramatically reducing the board space needed for a synthesizer design and reducing overall size of the end product. Virtually all RF systems require a PLL synthesizer and our high performance and wide frequency range offerings means we have not only a part for every application but our parts can be used for multiple systems, reducing our customers’ time to market.
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Why would a customer use our PLLs and VCOs?
The high performance of our parts lead to high performance in our customers’ end products – a great example is in electronic test and measurement equipment which requires a very clean, low phase noise synthesizer. Our HMC703 has a very low phase noise floor [of -233 dBc/Hz] that is ideal for this application. Also, the HMC703’s integrated sweeping and modulation features make it simpler and faster to design-in and operate than a standard PLL.
Tell me about the most important specifications?
After frequency range and performance, phase noise is typically the most important specification for our customers. In nearly all applications, as low as possible phase noise is desired – it results in better signal to noise ratios and more spectrally pure output. Because of this, we’ve put a lot of effort into having the lowest phase noise PLLs in the industry.
Take the ADF4355 and ADF5355 family of integrated PLLVCOs – these offer very low VCO phase noise which is comparable to GaAs VCOs. [-138 dBc/Hz at a 1 MHz offset from a 3.4 GHz carrier] With the integrated VCO architecture of these two parts, the phase noise performance does not limit frequency range – these parts operate from 50 MHz to 6.8 and 13.6 GHz respectively. This means a wideband system only needs one PLLVCO – reducing the need for designers to qualify and test multiple products based on frequency range.
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What other challenges do RF engineers encounter? Can you give a few Analog Devices examples?
PLL spurs can really create headaches for system designers. The good news is that, compared to other commercially available alternatives, our parts have very low power spurs reducing the distortion in a system and improving overall quality.
We also offer a free frequency planning software which support our PLLVCOs that will optimize a system to virtually eliminate all problematic spurs.
What are some other useful features?
Many of our PLLs have features that allow them to generate waveforms of frequency sweeping over time. This is ideal for radar and many instrumentation applications where sweeping outputs are required because customers don’t need the software processing overhead.
Looking ahead at 5G and other future communication improvements, many of our PLLs have the ability to control the output phase – this is ideal for beamforming and phase array applications where precise, dynamic phase control is needed.
What resources are available to designers who want to use our PLLVCOs?
We have large more-than-silicon offering including free simulation software, a free public online support community, EngineerZone, evaluation boards and reference designs.
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