Analog Devices, a world-class supplier of complete MMIC based solutions for communication and military markets, has launched the HMC920LP5E. The HMC920LP5E is the industry's first complete Class-A amplifier biasing and monitoring solution, and is ideal for power management and control in automotive telematics, Cellular/3G, LTE/WiMAX/4G, broadband, military, and test equipment applications.

The HMC920LP5E is an Active Bias Controller which can be used to bias depletion and enhancement mode amplifiers operating in a Class-A regime. This unique IC houses an integrated LDO to regulate the Drain supply of the targeted amplifier, and a negative voltage generator for depletion mode devices. The gate voltage of the targeted amplifier is automatically adjusted to keep the quiescent current of the amplifier constant over supply, temperature, and threshold drifts.

The control block in the HMC920LP5E manages the correct power-up and power-down sequence of the targeted amplifier to safely turn it on or off. It constantly monitors the quiescent current of the amplifier and generates an alarm if the current exceeds a higher or lower threshold.

The HMC920LP5E features an Enable pin to quickly turn the targeted amplifier on or off. A Trigger-out signal is generated when the targeted amplifier achieves stable quiescent operation. Using Enable and Trigger-out signals, multiple HMC920LP5E devices can be daisy chained to bias a cascaded amplifier, which makes it possible to enable or disable the cascaded stages in a controlled and sequential manner.