A new source of standard linear components

Of all the different types of standard linear devices available to engineers today, there's probably none more critical than analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters. ADCs and DACs are widely used in electronic systems as a means of allowing control of analog functions. But in other applications they are essentially the interface between engineers and the real world. They allow designers to use digital computers to define and analyze signals used for complex high-speed communication, and then generate and capture those signals using DACs and ADCs so that the performance of actual hardware can be evaluated.

A number of semiconductor companies currently exist to supply converters for general-purpose applications that perform extremely well. But in a number of the labs I've visited, the most sought-after ADCs and DACs are, respectively, oscilloscopes and signal generators. The ability of modern oscilloscopes to digitize high-speed communication signals puts them in high demand in that field, as does the signal generator's ability to create high-frequency waveforms with which to test receiver or repeater functionality.

As a result, instrumentation companies are becoming suppliers of high-speed converter components to other companies. The latest example of this is the announcement last week by Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions (CWCDS, a business group of Curtiss-Wright Controls) that it will be using a DAC from the Component Solutions group of scope-maker Tektronix in its CHAMP-WB family of rugged OpenVPX modules for defense, aerospace, telecom, commercial, and medical applications.

The DAC that CWCDS will be using is the TDAC-25 10-bit 25-Gsample/s DAC ASIC, said to be the industry's fastest commercially available DAC technology and able to significantly increase the wideband RF data conversion performance for signal generation in commercial communications. It delivers up to -60 dBc of dynamic range and enables direct generation of wideband signals.

Last month, Tektronix also announced that it was planning to introduce the world's fastest oscilloscope in 2014 using “a patent pending signal processing architecture called Asynchronous Time Interleaving.” This ADC technology would be capable of digitizing bandwidths to 70 GHz and beyond, according to the company. Tektronix has previously shared ADC technology with National Instruments.

The move of standard linear technology from instrument companies, which must be at the forefront of such technology in order to provide the measurement capability their customers demand, into the general market makes sense from an economic standpoint. It would not be surprising to see other instrument companies follow Tektronix's lead.