BAW resonator technology

Bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonators offer many improvements over existing quartz and micro-electro mechanical resonator technologies. The primary improvement is the reliability of the BAW resonator in terms of vibration, shock, and mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) and failure-in-time (FIT) performance.

• BAW resonators can maintain a stability of less than 2 ppb/g with no significant jitter or frequency degradation before, during or after a vibration event.
• Under a mechanical shock of 1500 g, BAW resonators can maintain a frequency deviation <0.5 ppm and will not experience jitter degradation.
• BAW resonators have a FIT rate of 0.3 and a MTBF of 3.3 billion hours at 35°C, equivalent to 0.3 failures over 1 billion hours of operation.

The ultra-low-jitter performance of bulk acoustic wave (BAW) technology helps you meet the stringent requirements of 800-Gbps and 1.6-Tbps Ethernet-based networks and 5G/6G wireless infrastructure applications.

• The incorporation of BAW technology as a voltage-controlled oscillator into network synchronizers offers a >20-dB advantage over traditional oscillators and <50-fs jitter performance.
• A clean clocking source meets bit-error-rate requirements for EtherCAT, SerDes, Peripheral Component Interconnect Express, and application-specific integrated circuit and FPGA clocking.

Existing resonator frequencies range from a few kilohertz to a few megahertz. Our bulk acoustic wave (BAW) technology resonates at a gigahertz frequency, generating a wider range of frequencies for different timing applications.

• The integration of gigahertz resonator frequencies with a fractional output divider enables the generation of frequencies from 1 MHz to 400 MHz in our oscillators and clock generators.

The integration of BAW technology into our oscillators, clock generators and wireless microcontrollers removes additional components and reduces printed circuit board (PCB) space.

• Our BAW oscillators come in 3.2-mm-by-2.5 mm and 2.5-mm-by-2.0-mm packages for easy drop-in replacement.
• Integrating BAW resonators into clock generators eliminates the need for an external clock or crystal source, reducing bill of materials and simplifying designs. 
• Integrating BAW resonators into wireless microcontrollers removes the need for external crystal or oscillator reference clocks.

Bulk acoustic wave (BAW) technology provides improved stability.

• Temperature stability of ±10 ppm over the –40°C to 105°C operating range.
• Total frequency stability of ±25 ppm inclusive of solder shift, initial tolerance, variation from –40°C to 105°C, variation from 1.8 V to 3.3 V and 10-year aging.

TI manufactures its bulk acoustic wave (BAW) technology-based products internally, including fabrication, assembly and test.

• Fully internal manufacturing reduces dependability on external vendors.
• The integration of our BAW resonator into standard plastic packages containing other integrated circuits (ICs) enables us to support samples and mass-production devices with a single IC for multiple-frequency, output-type and voltage variants.