Texas Instruments (TI) Introduces Wideband Voltage Limiting Amplifiers for Communications, Video and Medical Applications

Nov. 7, 2003 - Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) announced a pair of wideband voltage limiting amplifiers from the company's Burr-Brown product line, providing accurate high-speed voltage limiting to protect sensitive signal conversion devices, such as high-speed analog-to-digital converters. The devices feature exceptional amplifier capability with externally controlled output stage voltage limiting. (See'www.ti.com/sc03236.) Both the low-gain stable OPA698 and high-gain bandwidth OPA699 include internally set default levels to the bipolar limiting function. Dropping these amplifiers into existing standard pinout designs will give a 1 nanosecond (ns) recovery from output overdrive at these default levels with no external connection to the limiter set pins. This allows an easy upgrade to existing designs suffering from the long overdrive recovery times seen in typical amplifier stages. Externally applied limiting voltages override this internal default.

Low offset errors in the limiter pin path (<+/-10mV) and extremely sharp transition from linear to limited operation, allow these limiter voltages to be set within 100mV of the desired linear output swing with no degradation in harmonic distortion or pulse response settling. Having virtually no overshoot going in and out of limiting, and a 1ns recovery time, ensures that output overdrives will be effectively blocked from the signal path.

The OPA698 features unity-gain stability, 250MHz gain bandwidth product and 1100V/micro seconds slew rate; the OPA699 features high-gain stability (G >= +4), 1 GHz gain bandwidth product and 1400V/micro seconds slew rate. Both devices offer +/-120mA output current, +/-15.5mA quiescent current, +/-4V output swing, and dual (+/-5V) or single (+5V to +12V) supplies.

Available Today
The OPA698 and OPA699 are packaged in an industry-standard pinout SO-8, and are available now from TI and its authorized distributors. The OPA698 is priced from $1.89 and the OPA699 is priced from $1.95 in 1,000 piece quantities (suggested resale pricing).