Texas Instruments Offers 4-GHz Quadrature Modulator

Texas Instruments Incorporated has announced a low noise quadrature (IQ) modulator that delivers RF output transmission up to 4 GHz, allowing service providers to support multiple wireless communications standards on a single RF transceiver card. The TRF370317 IQ modulator is a direct launch RF transmitter device that offers basestation equipment manufacturers improved linearity and higher output power, which can improve overall transmitter performance, while reducing power consumption and operating expenditures for service providers. The TRF370317 is a IQ modulator that meets the stringent requirements of GSM, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, W-CDMA, and WiMAX, as well as emerging next-generation wireless standards such as LTE and multi-carrier GSM. The TRF370317 enables conversion from baseband or intermediate frequency directly to RF frequencies, thereby reducing bill of material (BOM) costs and board space. The TRF370317 has a low noise floor of −163 dBm/Hz and features an output third order intercept point (OIP3) of 26.5 dBm, which significantly improves the adjacent channel power ratio in cellular basestation transmitter designs. The TRF370317 offers up to 4.5 dB better OIP3 than its nearest competitor. The device is capable of accepting input signals that range from zero (DC) to 350 MHz and generating a modulated RF output from 400 MHz up to 4 GHz.



The TRF370317 quadrature modulator can interface with a variety of digital-to-analog converter (DAC) devices, allowing for flexibility in RF transmitter design. When coupled with TI’s DAC5688, a 16-bit, 800-MSPS dual interpolating DAC, the TRF370317 provides a highly linear, compact solution for multi-carrier implementations. The low-noise DAC5688 further simplifies implementation by integrating phase, gain and DC offset adjustments for performance optimization. The RF transmitters designed using this direct launch architecture save space, power, BOM components and cost when compared to superheterodyne transmitter implementations. The TRF370317 quadrature modulator is available now in full production and is priced at $5.35 per 1K units.