Broadband, low-loss 5- and 6-bit digital attenuators

Low-loss 5- and 6-bit MMIC digital attenuators covering DC-16 GHz have been designed, fabricated and tested. These attenuators provide exceptional performance, with reference state insertion loss of less than 5 dB at 16 GHz (for the 6-bit chip) and 28 dB of dynamic range of attenuation. The input and output VSWRs of the attenuators are better than 1.6:1 over all attenuation states and frequencies. These digital attenuators have an input third order intercept point of 37 dBm.<<ETX>>