RF transceiver delivers twice the bandwidth at half the power

By Warren Miller, contributing writer

Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) announced the introduction of the newest addition to its RadioVerse design platform, an RF transceiver that claims to have the widest bandwidth in the industry to date. The ADRV9009 provides designers up to 200 MHz of bandwidth, twice that of its predecessors, while consuming 50% less power. It’s also considerably smaller than the previous generation of RF transceivers, cutting package size by 60%.

The ADRV9009 supports all existing cellular standards and is tunable over a range of 75 MHz to 6 GHz, giving manufacturers an opportunity to employ a single radio design across all band and power variants.

“For the first time, designers of cellular communications equipment have a common radio platform that can handle emerging wideband applications like 5G while delivering the high performance required by existing 2G, 3G, and 4G applications,” said Nitin Sharma, general manager of the Transceiver Product Group, Analog Devices, in a press release.

The ADRV9009’s high-performance standards make it a good fit in a variety of applications including network field testing, military communications, and radar systems. Laboratory-grade testing and measurement devices for 5G cellular and IoT networks can implement designs using the ADRV9009 as a single-chip, TDD solution to meet the escalating requirements of traditionally bulky MIMO equipment. It also meets the high-performance requirements of both wideband and narrowband applications used in military signal intelligence operations.

By handling local oscillator synchronization itself, it eliminates the need for external local oscillators, thereby simplifying digital beam-forming design for advanced cellular and phased-array radar systems.

Image source: Analog Devices.

The time-to-market advantages of the ADRV9009 are also a big benefit for designers increasingly crunched by tight development deadlines and additional feature requirements. Using a device that can address multiple applications and standards makes it possible to learn the ins and outs of the device and then leverage the knowledge in other designs.

Devices that address wide application ranges are showing up more and more as new technology advances are applied toward widening the application space instead of merely focusing on delivering the ultimate in bandwidth. Manufacturers are finding that a wider market can be more rewarding than a narrow one that shifts upward every year.

To make it even easier to learn about and use the ADRV909, ADI has created an ecosystem of development support resources. These resources include development platforms that can be used for prototypes and field testing, software tools to accelerate design and debug, reference designs that provide a head start on a custom development project, and a suite of complete radio solutions.