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TOP PRODUCTS OF 2002
The list for 2002 offers a comprehensive mix of hardware, software, and test instruments, with technologies supporting architectures ranging from baseband to optical.
Technology advances even during difficult years, as evidenced by an impressive collection of new products making up the Top Products of 2002. Selected by the editors of Microwaves & RF, the top 13 products of 2002 (see table) represent the diversity of technologies employed by this magazine's readers, from software to hardware, and from RF and baseband through millimeter-wave frequencies and optical signals. The list is a true "boiling pot" of manufacturers, a mixture of the old and the new, and the large and the small.
Among the smallest of the Top Products comes from north of the border, in the form of the SE4100 Global Positioning System receiver (Rx) integrated circuit (IC) from Site Semiconductor (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). Based on silicon-germanium (Site) process technology, IC integrates an intermediate-frequency (IF) filter, voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), oscillator tank circuitry, low-noise amplifier (LNA), phase-locked loop (PLL), and crystal oscillator within a package measuring just 4 X 4 mm. The first product in the company's line of PointCharger Global Positioning System (GPS) devices, the chip draws less than 10-mA current from a +2.7-VDC supply. When coupled with a commercial baseband IC from ST Microelectronics, the chip forms a GPS Rx solution that consumes less than 120 mW of power.
The "other" GPS Rx on the list is from Valence Semiconductor (Irvine, CA), but is based on complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process technology. The company's VS7001 Rx IC, which is designed for supply voltages from +2.3 to +3.6 VDC, consumes less than 30-mW power at +2.3 VDC.
Maxim Integrated Circuits (Sunnyvale, CA) contributed their MAX5886-MAX5888 line of low-power digital-to-analog converters (DACs) to the list. Designed for multicarrier signal generation in cellular base stations, the DACs offer 14-b typical resolution at sampling rates to 500 MSamples/s with noise levels to -160 dBc/Hz and outstanding dynamic-range performance.
Analog Devices, Inc. (Wilmington, MA) continued to advance the state of direct-digital-synthesis (DDS) technology with their 9954 DDS IC. It consumes only 180-mW power when operating at an update rate of 400 MSamples/s. The IC features on-chip 1024 x 32 b random-access memory (RAM),...