The PE9600 and PE9700 PLL family devices feature greater than 10 dB in phase noise improvement and one-tenth the power consumption of competitive devices, making them ideal replacements in existing designs and the clear first choice in new designs.

Peregrine also announced that the PLL circuit core used in the new devices is available as a building block for customer-defined devices.

The PE9600 devices operate at up to 2.2 GHz and are combined with an external prescaler to generate the LO (local oscillator) signals required by satellite communications transceivers.

The prescaler typically divides the required LO signal frequency down to 1.4 GHz, placing it within the operating frequency of the PE9600 low-phase-noise PLL.

The PE9700 devices operate at up to 3.0 GHz, and are intended for newer designs, eliminating the external prescalar function and reducing the parts count and cost of a frequency synthesizer board.

The PE9600/PE9700 chips are fabricated in Peregrine's patented UTSi (Ultra-Thin Silicon) CMOS process technology, which utilizes a synthetic sapphire substrate that is a pure insulator, rather than semiconductor.

As a result, they provide excellent RF performance, and easily surpass the rad-hard (radiation-hardened) requirements for reliable operation in commercial satellites.

The PLLs are immune to single-event latch-up (SEL), have single-event upset (SEU) of less than 10-9 errors per bit/day, and offer total-dose radiation tolerance of 100 krad.

Initially, each of the new product families contains two ICs. The PE9601 and PE9602 operate at 2.2 GHz, and the PE9701 and PE9702 operate at 3.0 GHz. All of the devices feature a 10/11 dual-modulus prescaler, counters and a phase comparator.

The counters are programmable through either a serial or parallel interface, and can also be directly hard-wired. Two of the PLLs, the PE9601 and PE9701, have an on-chip charge pump, while the PE9602 and PE9702 have an up/down output to drive an external charge pump.

Performance Specifics The Peregrine PLLs exhibit industry-leading performance for commercial space applications. Phase noise and power consumption at various comparison frequencies, and under both temperature and radiation extremes, are unmatched by any comparably priced devices.

At a 1 MHz comparison frequency, with an ambient temperature of from -40�C to 85�C, PE9600/PE9700 devices have a -159 dBc/Hz phase noise floor, which is 10 dBc/Hz lower than the best-performing competitive chips.

Power consumption of the PE9600 is 60 mW, and of the PE9700 is 75 mW, compared to the 625 mW consumed by the leading competitive parts. After exposure to 100 krads of radiation, phase noise performance of the Peregrine PLLs changes by less than 1 dBc/Hz, and there is no change in power consumption.