Temperature compensation? it's so easy (hybrid MIC temperature-controlled attenuation)

A temperature-controlled attenuator is demonstrated that can be utilized in applications such as compensating the temperature dependence of the gain of solid-state amplifiers. The attenuator is realized as a compact hybrid-circuit, the heart of which is a novel linear GaAs MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) attenuator chip. As a result of the attenuation of the chip being a linear function of its control voltage, the design of such compensation circuits is greatly simplified. The circuit described here is capable of providing up to 12 dB of gain compensation over -55 to +12 degrees C. The useful frequency range of circuits based on this attenuator is practically from DC to 10 GHz using only one circuit. The accuracy of the attenuation versus temperature can be made better than 5%.<
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