ADL5903 Aging

Hi fnoriega,

Which part are you using, ADL5902 or ADL5903? Both are mentioned above.

Can you tell us, what is the magnitude of the long term drift that you observe? How does that compare to your requirement?

We always recommend in-system calibration for detector ICs such as these. It's clear that you do this now, which is good. 

Kindly note, however, that for these two devices, we generally would NOT recommend an individual in-system calibration for temperature drift. Instead, we would recommend that the application should accept the temperature drift of the part, which in this case would be quite good, +/- 0.2 to 0.4 dB, depending on the part and other specifics. The reason is that the devices are already internally compensated for temperature variation. Applying an external compensation 'on top of' the internal compensation could be making the problem worse rather than better. 

Hi fnoriega,

Which part are you using, ADL5902 or ADL5903? Both are mentioned above.

Can you tell us, what is the magnitude of the long term drift that you observe? How does that compare to your requirement?

We always recommend in-system calibration for detector ICs such as these. It's clear that you do this now, which is good. 

Kindly note, however, that for these two devices, we generally would NOT recommend an individual in-system calibration for temperature drift. Instead, we would recommend that the application should accept the temperature drift of the part, which in this case would be quite good, +/- 0.2 to 0.4 dB, depending on the part and other specifics. The reason is that the devices are already internally compensated for temperature variation. Applying an external compensation 'on top of' the internal compensation could be making the problem worse rather than better. 

Hi Bruce,

Sorry, I'm using ADL5903.

We didn´t start testing yet, but our client ask us about the neccessity of recalibrations after some years.

Could you clarify abour this topic?

Thanks in advance

Have a nice week

Hi fnoriega,

We do have Long-term drift data on some of the RF detector devices; not all. Luckily, ADL5903 is one of them. 

Looking at the data, we see drift of a few hundred'ths of a dB, over a contiguous time period exceeding 900 Hrs (about 37 days).  Because the file size is quite large, I'll send in separate email to the address registered with your username. 

Also, please understand that we don't really know what the few hundred'ths of a dB might be due to: maybe the IC, or maybe the PC board, or the test setup, or the solder flux on the PCB, or maybe solvents used to clean the board, SMA connectors and cables, maybe the multimeter, etc. etc. 

I once worked on a system where we were able to reduce drift over time by first baking the boards around +80 deg C, to help 'burn-in' the boards, immediately prior to calibration. In that case, it really helped a lot. 

Received, thanks a lot Bruce

Hi Bruce,

Do you have same information for ADL5906?

We use this model in other application.

Thanks in advance

Hi fnoriega,

Sorry, we do not have long-term drift data for ADL5906.

Hi Bruce,

Are we very wrong if we use the available daata from ADL5902 or ADL5903?

Best Regards

ADL5902 is similar. As an approximation, I'll send you the long-term drift data we have for that device. Again, it will go to your email address registered with your user name. 

Thank you Bruce