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Old 2nd Dec 2017, 9:48 am   #26
G0HZU_JMR
Dekatron
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK.
Posts: 3,077
Default Re: Attenuators - theory and the design of.

Quote:
There is something about your attenuator that I don't understand, maybe its for some reason.
The attenuator sections look fine to me? The resistor values all look to be close to the classic values for 2, 3, 5, 10 and 20dB sections. I can't see how or why anyone would do it differently unless you went to T sections rather than Pi.

At work we have always used 300R for the shunt resistors in a 3dB pad and I think this is common practice to allow 300R resistors to be used here. But 270R is also used here. Note that there is a decimal point typo in the table because the series resistor should be 248R and not 24.8R for a 20dB attenuator.

For ultra wideband operation (up into the GHz region) the frequency response of a 20dB attenuator can be improved if it is made up from arranging 120R (or 124R) 0805 package SMD resistors in series or parallel. It's possible to make a precision 20dB attenuator by selecting/grading 5% 120R and 124R resistors on a DMM and it should work well up into the GHz region. 0805 SMD resistors with a value in the 82R to 150R region will behave very well over a huge bandwidth. Often you will see commercial attenuators where the designer has tried to use parallel or series resistor combinations to improve the bandwidth in a similar way.

At work I still use an old 'company' DOS program to design Pi or T attenuators. It dates back to the 1980s but it works really well. I can remember the values for the classic attenuators but this program is still very useful for custom values or for different input or output impedances.
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Regards, Jeremy G0HZU
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