X9470 Datasheet, PDF (11/24 Pages) Xicor Inc. – RF Power Amplifier (PA) Bias Controller

X9470
Output Block Pins
V_BIAS
The V_BIAS is the gate bias voltage output. It is buffered
with a unity gain amplifier and is capable of driving 1nF
(typical) capacitive loads.
This pin is intended to be connected through an RF fil-
ter to the gate of an LDMOS power transistor. The
voltage of V_BIAS is determined by the XDCP’s value of
the R_BIAS resistor.
Other Pins
SHDN
SHDN is an input pin that is used to shutdown the
V_BIAS output voltage follower. When the SHDN pin is
HIGH, the V_BIAS pin is pulled to VSS. When the device
is shutdown, the current R_BIAS wiper position will be
maintained in the wiper counter register. When shut-
down is disabled, the wiper returns to the same wiper
position before shutdown was invoked. Note that when
the device is taken out of shutdown mode (SHDN
goes from HIGH to LOW), the CS input must be cycled
once to enable calibration.
SDA
Serial bus data input/output. Bi-directional. External
pullup is required.
A0, A1, A2
Serial bus slave address pins. These pins are used to
defined a hardware slave address. This will allow up to
8 of the X9470’s to be shared on one two-wire bus.
These are useful if several X9470’s are used to control
the bias voltages of several LDMOS Power Transis-
tors in a single application. Default hardware slave
address is “000” if left unconnected due to internal
pull-down resistor.
TYPICAL APPLICATION
The X9470 can be used along with a microprocessor
and transmit control chips to control and coordinate
FET biasing (see Figure 1). The CS, SCL, and SDA sig-
nals are required to control the X9470 Bias Adjustment
Circuit Block. An internal R_WREF voltage is provided via
a programmable voltage divider between the RH_REF
and RL_REF pins and is used to set the voltage reference
of the comparator. The shutdown (SHDN) and bias volt-
age indicators (INC/DEC) are additional functions that
offer FET control, monitoring, and protection.
Typically, the closed loop setup of the X9470 allows for
final calibration of a power amplifier at production test.
The CS and SCL pins are used to perform this calibra-
tion function. Once in a base station, the amplifier can
then be re-calibrated any time that there is no RF signal
present. The bias setting block can also be used open
loop to adjust gate bias or can be shutdown using the
SHDN pin. The sense and scale block can be used for
amplifier power monitoring diagnostics as well.
The range of the drain bias current operating point of
the LDMOS FET is set by an external reference
across the reference potentiometer. The wiper of the
potentiometer sets the trip point for comparison with
V_P , the amplified voltage across R_SENSE, the drain
resistor. The output of the comparator causes the
R_BIAS potentiometer to increment or decrement auto-
matically on the next SCL clock cycle. This R_BIAS
potentiometer is configured as a voltage divider with a
buffered wiper output which drives the gate voltage of
an external LDMOS FET.
Once the optimum bias point is reached, the R_BIAS
value is latched into a wiper counter register. Again,
the V_BIAS gate voltage can be updated continuously or
periodically depending on the system requirements.
Both terminals of the R_BIAS potentiometer are access-
ible and can be driven by external reference voltages to
achieve a desired I_DQ vs. gate voltage resolution, as
well as supporting temperature compensation circuitry.
In summary, the X9470 provides full flexibility on set-
ting the operating bias point and range of an external
RF power amplifier for GSM, EDGE, UMTS, CDMA or
other similar applications.
11
FN8204.0
March 8, 2005