Texas Instruments (TI) announced the launch of the industry’s widest-bandwidth high-input-impedance (Hi-Z) buffer amplifier, capable of supporting frequency bandwidths as high as 3 GHz.
The wider bandwidth and high slew rates of the BUF802 enable higher signal throughput and minimal input settling time, Texas Instruments said. Designers can leverage this faster throughput to measure higher-frequency signals more accurately in test and measurement applications including oscilloscopes, active probes and high-frequency data-acquisition systems.
TI said test and measurement engineers can save months of design time by eliminating the need for custom ASICs and simplifying front-end designs.
The bandwidth achieved by the BUF802 was previously possible by using application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that can increase system design time, complexity and cost. By eliminating ASICs, designers who use TI’s buffer can get to market faster while achieving a wide dynamic range at a fraction of the cost.
Previous alternatives to ASIC-based design implementations required dozens of discrete components such as field-effect transistors (FETs), protection diodes and transistors. These discrete, FET-input amplifier-based implementations add to a design’s bill-of-materials (BOM) cost and system complexity and are unable to deliver the same bandwidth as ASICs, thus limiting the signal throughput of data-acquisition applications.
The BUF802 provides a single-chip alternative to ASICs or FET-input amplifier-based implementations by integrating the features of discrete components while providing 10 times wider bandwidth than FET-input amplifiers, matching the performance of custom ASICs.
Texas Instruments said the BUF802 is the industry’s first buffer to enable quiescent current adjustment for a range of bandwidth and signal swing requirements, from 100 MHz to 3 GHz at 1-V peak to peak (VPP) and as high as 2 GHz at 2 VPP. This wide adjustment range for bandwidth and signal swing allows designers to easily scale their front-end designs across multiple data-acquisition applications, easing system cost and redesign.
Integrated functional modes allow engineers to use the BUF802 as a standalone buffer or in a composite loop with a precision amplifier like the OPA140. The BUF802 can help achieve high input impedance and high slew rates in applications that can tolerate 100-mV offsets or where the signal chain is AC-coupled. In a composite loop, the new buffer can achieve high DC precision and 3-GHz bandwidth in applications requiring 1 μV/°C maximum offset drift.
Texas Instruments said the BUF802 is available for purchase on TI.com in a 3-mm-by-3-mm 16-pin very thin no-lead (VQFN) package, and is priced at US$1.80 in 1,000-unit quantities. The BUF802RGTEVM evaluation module is available on TI.com for US$25. TI offers multiple payment and shipping options on TI.com.
