High power switch from Labtech Microwave

Commenting on the new product, Alistair Frier, business development manager of Labtech Microwave said: “Prior to the LMS902 our family of PIN (positive intrinsic negative) switches was aimed at the low and medium power, wide band switch markets. Following research in to current availability and in response to fulfilling a number of customer specifications we realised that our existing switch range could be developed further.

“The technical challenge was to combine the high power with acceptable switching speed. High power normally implies large devices to handle the associated current, which in turn leads to high capacitance components. This capacitance has to be charged or discharged to operate the device, placing constraints on the drive circuitry, which is optimised to achieve the desired switching time. In addition, to obtain high power it is usually necessary to move to an all-shunt design so that all devices can be mounted directly on the heat dissipating surface to reduce thermal effects and there is no series device limiting the power handing capacity. This has been achieved with the LMS902.”