The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 04, 2000
Filed:
Nov. 07, 1997
Eberhard Brunner, Waakirchen, DE;
Analog Devices, Inc., Norwood, MA (US);
Abstract
A switched-gain cascode amplifier changes gain by using a differential pair of cascode transistors to switch signal current to one of two different input terminals of a loading network. The load is connected to the loading network which attenuates the output signal by a different amount depending on which input terminal the signal is switched to. In a preferred embodiment, the cascode transistors are driven differentially to conserve power supply headroom, and the bondwire and leadframe inductance of an integrated circuit are utilized as elements of the loading network. The loading network can be extended to include several stages that are implemented as a ladder such as an R/2R ladder with multiple cascode transistors to provide uniform multiple gain steps.