By leveraging the baseline process and MEMS manufacturing technology, TeraVicta Technologies has announced the availability of its dc to 26.5 GHz SPDT MEMS switch, the TT1244. It offers a step improvement in bandwidth and linearity over competing switch solutions, while occupying significantly less area and consuming less power.” The TT1244 extends TeraVicta's portfolio to address a larger part of the $1 billion small-signal switch market while enabling new applications that have not been possible with existing switch technology solutions,” said Ray Burgess, TeraVicta's president and CEO. “At 26.5 GHz, we cover the entire K band for communications and instrumentation products,” noted Burgess.

“This switch offers unparalleled RF performance in bandwidth, insertion loss, and linearity and provides the means for us to address signal integrity issues that are inherently difficult to solve,” said Yongquan Fan, test engineer at LSI Corporation. “The bit rate of products we build continues to increase — in some cases, beyond 8 Gbps. We look forward to exploring how TeraVicta's dc to 26.5 GHz switches can enable us to extend our test system's capabilities and keep pace with the increased frequency requirements of our new products.”

The TT1244 delivers ultralow insertion loss and outstanding linearity (IP3) for improvedsystem performance — all in a standard surface-mount micro BGA chip-scale package, said the maker. Applications for the TT1244 switch include automated test equipment (ATE), instrumentation, radar (automotive and military), and communications infrastructure. In fact, at 26.5 GHz it covers the entire K band for communications and instrumentation products, the manufacturer said. “We deliver the bandwidth necessary to accurately test the new wave of high-speed interconnect protocols such as SRIO, PCI-Express and 10Gb Ethernet that are being incorporated into many new processors, DSPs, FPGAs, and DIMM memory subsystems,” noted Burgess.

To achieve high electrical and reliability performance for its MEMS switches, the manufacturer has developed three proprietary designs. These include device-on-package construction, high-force disk actuator (HFDA) and in-line hermetic packaging technology.

For more information, visit www.teravicta.com.