A review of surface acoustic wave devices and their current applications

State-of-the-art Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) components including resonator products, low-loss SAW filters, and reflective array compresser (RAC) deviees are readily available today for military, commercial, and consumer applications. SAW performance advantages are supported with high volume production capability and multiple-sourcing of most SAW deviee types. For example, CATV resonators are currently produced at rates exceeding million-a-year quantities while competition grows steadily for the military SAW requirements. This paper reviews SAW deviees that are currently in production at U.S. SAW companies in which SAW components are a principal product and are primarily produced for sale. These companies are Andersen Labs, Crystal Technology, Phonon, RF Monolithics, and Sawtek. Conventional and low-loss bandpass filters, filter banks, dispersive and nondispersive delay lines, reflective array compressors (RAC´s), resonators, multipole resonator filters, and oscillators will be covered. Examples of SAW products from each of the SAW companies follow.