Reflection attenuators

Updated April 14, 2006

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Coming in May 2006! this page will give more details on designing reflection attenuators!

A reflection attenuator is constructed from a quadrature coupler and a pair of PIN diodes. The PIN diides have a a characteristic that allows their RF resistance to change depending on the bias voltage

More to come.... be patient!

There are five common attenuator topologies used in microwave circuits, the tee, the pi, the bridged tee, the reflection attenuator and the balanced attenuator. The tee, pi and bridged tee each require two different resistor values, while the reflection and balanced attenuators need only a matched pair of resistors. This allows both the reflection and balanced topologies to be used as variable attenuators with a single control voltage or control current. There are two variations of the reflection attenuator, depending on whether the terminations R1 are less than or greater than the system characteristic impedance Z0.