New Industry Products

AnalogicTech’s Class D Audio Amplifier Extends Battery Life In Portable Applications

April 29, 2009 by Jeff Shepard

Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc. (AnalogicTech™) announced its first Class D audio amplifier. The AAT5101 2.5W Class D audio amplifier delivers dramatic power savings by combining low voltage operation with low quiescent current and standby current an order of magnitude below competitive devices.

"While the Lithium-ion batteries currently used in most portable systems today shutdown at 2.5V, a new generation of batteries coming onto the market are designed to operate at much lower voltages," says CJ Zhang, Product Line Vice President. "By supporting operation down to 2.1V and offering very low quiescent and standby current, the AAT5101 offers designers of cell phones, notebooks, GPS and navigation devices an opportunity to significantly reduce power requirements and extend battery life."

This new mono class D audio power amplifier operates across a wide 2.1 to 5.5V supply voltage making it well suited for systems using next generation low voltage Li-ion/polymer batteries. To further extend battery life, the audio amplifier delivers up to 92% efficiency and offers a very low 0.06µA shutdown current and 1.35mA quiescent current.

The AAT5101 outputs 1.35W with an 8Ω load and THD+N < 1% and 2.5W with a 4Ω load and THD+N < 10%. Its low noise, filterless PWM architecture is said to simplify system design by eliminating the output filter, reducing external component count and system cost. To ensure clean sound across the entire audio output range, the AAT5101 delivers 0.12% THD+N at 5V with 8 ohm load and Pout = 1.0W. PSRR is -60 dB typical, while SNR is 91 dB typical.

The new audio amplifier also features integrated thermal and short circuit protection circuitry with self-recovery to protect the device from damage during over current conditions. Proprietary circuitry effectively suppresses pop and click noise.

The AAT5101 is qualified across the -40 to +85°C temperature range. The new audio amplifier is available in compact 9-pin wafer-level chip scale packaging (WLCSP) and sells for $0.28 in 1K quantities.