AttenuatorX

h1. AttenuatorX Wiki

h2. Project background

This project grew out of dissatisfaction for adjustable attenuator products currently on the market. These devices are often used to protect the inputs to test equipment and other sensitive RF devices. As part of my job as a Radar Technician, I needed an attenuator that could handle up to around 40 dBm, provide a variety of attenuation levels, and operate over a large frequency spectrum. The only devices I found that met these needs cost over $2000, and are adjusted over 1 dB increments by physically flipping switches or turning dials. I thought I could do better, so I started working on doing just that.

I have experience as a Radar Technician, and as a licensed amateur radio technician (KI6NVY), but while I've worked extensively with RF, this is my first time engineering with RF. I welcome any recommendations, corrections, and other correspondence.

h2. Milestones

This project encompasses several smaller projects. We will start by designing two test boards to progressively test the components used in the final boards. The primary devices will also include details on the selected enclosure, Bill of Materials (BOM), firmware, and other information for building you own device.

*[[XTest1]]* is a very basic test board with a chip attenuator, a digital attenuator, and a very basic AVR ATTiny microcontroller to handle switching.

*XTest2* is a somewhat more complex, adding digital RF switches, and a second attenuation path to the basic XTest1 design.

*[[AttenuatorXLE]]* is a low-cost Digitally adjustable attenuator which will be the first of the two primary devices developed. It will offer the following preliminary specifications:

    10 to 41 dB Attenuation in 0.5 dB Steps

    50 MHz to 3 GHz Operation

    Up to 36 dBm Input Power

*[[AttenuatorX]]* is a low-cost Digitally adjustable attenuator which will be the second of the two primary devices developed. It will offer the following preliminary specifications:

    10 to 95 dB Attenuation in 0.5 dB Steps

    50 MHz to 3 GHz Operation

    Up to 45 dBm Input Power