RF attenuator adjusts signals from 200 MHz to 8 GHz

Mini-Circuits RC4DAT-8G-120H RF signal attenuator reduces signals as much as 120 dB controlled over a USB or LAN link.

Whether in test setups or systems deployment, RF signals often need an amplitude adjustment. That’s where attenuators come in. When you need adjustable attenuation, then a programmable attenuator becomes essential. The Mini-Circuits RC4DAT-8G-120H programmable attenuator lets you reduce signal amplitudes by as much as 120 dB from 200 MHz to 8 GHz. That frequency range covers 5G’s low-band and mid-band frequencies plus Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, LoRa, and others.

The RC4DAT-8G-120H is programmable in 0.05 dB steps from 0 dB to 105 dB, then in 0.1 dB steps to 120 dB. Insertion loss ranges from ±0.5 dB to ±4.3 dB depending on attenuation level.

Programmable over a USB or Ethernet link, the RC4DAT-8G-120H provides four 50-Ω channels. You can control the attenuator through an API, through a Windows app, or through HTTP/Telnet through the LAN port.

If you need more than four channels, you can connect as many as 25 units together into a single system of with up to 100 channels. The attenuator units connect in a daisy-chain by connecting the first unit’s serial-out port to the next unit’s serial-in connector and so on. Thus, only the first unit connects to a computer over USB or Ethernet. The primary unit gets address 0 with the secondary units getting addresses 1 to 24. Channel synchronization time — delay between the first and last attenuator transitions beginning, in response to a command to set all channels — is 400 µsec because of the daisy-chain configuration.