Design of Variable Attenuators Using Different Kinds of PIN-Diodes

TL;DRAbstract

Variable attenuators are important circuits that can be employed in many radio frequency (RF) applications, e.g., in automatic gain control (AGC) amplifiers, broadband gain-control blocks at RF frequencies or as broadband vector modulators. For any applications, low insertion phase shift and low power consumption are of interest. A way to implement variable attenuators is using the RF PIN diode. The PIN diode is characterized by a low doped (I = intrinsic) semiconductor region between p- (P) and n-type (N) semiconductor regions. Besides the variable attenuators, the PIN-diode is used in other RF circuits, such as RF switches, limiters and phase shifters. This project presents the design of variable attenuators at 7.5 GHz and 500 MHz frequency bandwidth for ultra-wideband (UWB) applications using two different PIN diodes. The variable attenuators have a topology based on 90° hybrid couplers. The design is performed using Advance Design Systems (ADS) from Agilent Technologies Inc. After

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