TI Buffer Amplifier Boosts Signal Bandwidth by 10x in Data-acquisition Systems

Article By : Texas Instruments Inc.

TI's BUF802 buffer amplifier is capable of supporting frequency bandwidths as high as 3GHz.

Texas Instruments Inc.’s (TI) BUF802 buffer amplifier is capable of supporting frequency bandwidths as high as 3GHz. Its wider bandwidth and high slew rates enable higher signal throughput and minimal input settling time. 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.

The bandwidth achieved by the BUF802 was previously only 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.

The flexible BUF802 is the industry’s first buffer to enable quiescent current adjustment for a range of bandwidth and signal swing requirements, from 100MHz to 3GHz at 1-V peak to peak (VPP) and as high as 2GHz at 2VPP. 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. As a stand-alone buffer, 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 3GHz bandwidth in applications requiring 1μV/°C maximum offset drift.

The BUF802 comes in a 3-by-3-mm 16-pin very thin no-lead (VQFN) package.

 

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