Joel Kolstad wrote:

Anyone have a favorite low power (as in tens of milliwatts) receiver IC
that
you can still get ahold of? I'm looking to see what could potentially
replace
some Philips UAA2080's, which are no longer available new from Philips.
They were a really great part, giving you an oscillator, frequency
mulitplier, RF pre-amp, I/Q mixers and a bit of demodulation (they were
intended for use in pagers but gave you the raw I/Q output so could be
pushed into service for other applications too) -- all of this for less
than 10mW!

Looking around at parts, it seems that even plain old mixers now often run
50mW or more. Ostensibly this seems due to their usage at higher
frequencies (low GHz range), which I can understand, but it's a feature
don't require. I'm after low power parts for dealing with more pedestrian
frequencies (low to mid-hundreds of MHz) and small bandwidths (single
digit kHz).

Thanks,
---Joel KOlstad

Most manufacturers seem to be obsessed with "high intercept point", which is
desirable in some instances, but always carries a major power penalty.
With the demise of some of my favourite ICs, I'm going back to discrete
components for many things.

Bob
--
Everything gets easier with practice, except getting up in the morning!