Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) has introduced a family of integrated wideband variable gain amplifiers. The new devices' architecture provides designers with a highly flexible combination of bandwidth, gain and analogue input voltage to address design challenges of differential line receivers and equalizers, pulse shaping, continuously variable gain and attenuation stages, automatic gain control (AGC) and voltage tunable filters. These applications are typically used in the professional video, test and measurement, military, communications and medical markets.

The VCA820, VCA821, VCA822 and VCA824 offer good bandwidth, noise and slew rate with a flexible analogue input voltage. These features enable customers to process large amounts of data at faster rates while minimising harmonic distortion to improve signal fidelity. The VCA821 and VCA824 offer a large bandwidth of 420 MHz for a gain of 10 V/V which is over 300 percent larger than comparable devices. They also provide a fast slew rate of 2500 V/us, which is 40 percent faster than what is available today. The VCA820 and VCA822, meanwhile, offer a competitive 150 MHz bandwidth and slew rate of 1700 V/us.

The VCA82x voltage-controlled amplifiers give customers the ability to set the maximum gain anywhere from 0 dB (1 V/V) to 40 dB (100 V/V) with external resistors. An externally supplied gain voltage can then be varied dynamically to implement a greater than 40 dB gain adjust range. Designers can also choose between linear gain in dB/V or V/V.

Offered in small, space-saving packages, the entire VCA82x family is pin compatible for easy upgrade to higher bandwidths. This also allows for switching between dB/V and V/V linear gain control options, further adding to the flexibility of the devices.

The VCA820, VCA821, VCA822, VCA824 are available today in a SOIC-14 and MSOP-10 package.