
APPLICATION NOTE
Description
Figure 1 above shows the CLC5506 functional block dia-
gram overview.
The LNA(Low NoiseAmplifier) is responsible for maintaining
a nominal input impedance of 200
with minimum noise
contribution and some finite and fixed amount of gain (
~
4).
Exceptional Noise Figure (NF) performance of 4.8dB (
@
Gain = 25.75dB) is achieved by utilizing an active impedance
matching circuit technique which overcomes the inevitable
3dB NF penalty when using passive shunt matching.
The LNA stage is immediately followed by a transconduc-
tance stage (Gm) which then converts the LNA’s voltage out-
put into a differential current output with fixed gain.
The 6-bit D/A converter, which processes the digital code
read into the device using the MICROWIRE interface, con-
sists of a 6-bit R2R ladder. In order to achieve true
″
Linear in
dB
″
gain control at the output, the D/A converter output is
processed by a
″
Linear to Exponential
″
converter block be-
fore being used to set the gain of the input signal. The
″
Lin-
ear to Exponential
″
block and the
″
Temperature Compensa-
tion
″
blocks work in conjunction to achieve gain stability over
the temperature range. Finally, the output stage consists of a
variable gain cell with open Collector output. This variable
gain cell sets the signal channel gain in accordance with the
value of the digital code.
Gain Control
The CLC5506 minimum gain is at 10dB nominal. There are
a total of 64 distinct gain control codes possible (serial data
input through Data In pin) at 0.25dB/code resulting in a maxi-
mum nominal gain of 25.75dB.
Therefore, the overall gain can be written as:
Gain (dB) = 10dB + N
code
* 0.25 (dB/code)
where N
refers to the decimal equivalent of the 6-bit gain
control code.
TABLE 1.
Gain
0
1
2
***
K
***
62
63
Typical Gain Setting (dB)
10
10.25
10.5
***
10 + 0.25
*
K
***
25.50
25.75
Note
Minimum Gain Setting
Maximum Gain Setting
Power Down
The CLC5506 is able to go to a Power Down mode in order
to minimize its power consumption to a fraction of its nominal
value. The Power Down mode is activated through the MI-
CROWIRE interface by clocking in a
″
1
″
into the Power
Down shift register prior to allowing LE (pin 5) to go high. Re-
fer to Figure 2 and Figure 3 for more information.
In Power Down mode, the CLC5506 sinks less than 35μA.
The CLC5506 will wake up to the requested gain level speci-
fied by Data In through the MICROWIRE interface.
When V
is first applied, the device is configured such that
it would always
″
wake up
″
with a nominal gain of 17.75dB
(N
code
= 3).
DS101050-17
FIGURE 1. CLC5506 Functional Block Diagram
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