News

17 February 2009

 

RFMD launching first new CDMA handset products in five years

At this week’s 2009 GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, RF Micro Devices Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA announced that it is targeting the CDMA components market with the introduction of multiple new CDMA front-end products. In 2009, RFMD plans a major refresh of its CDMA product portfolio, marking its first new offerings for CDMA handsets in about five years.

CDMA front-end products to be launched include power amplifiers (PAs), discrete switches and GPS low-noise amplifier (LNA) modules with integrated filters. New products recently launched include the RF73xx family of linear CDMA PAs, the RF1126 and RF1136 discrete switches, and the RF2815 GPS LNA module with integrated surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter, designed for GPS-enabled CDMA mobile devices.

CDMA handsets totaled about 170 million units in 2008 and continue to represent a large segment of the overall handset market, says Eric Creviston, president of RFMD’s Cellular Products Group. The CDMA product refresh is expected to extend the firm’s reach to new customers and design teams and expand its total available market by about 150 million units in 2009.

“RFMD is diversifying its customer base and product portfolio through a significant increase in new product introductions,” says president & CEO Bob Bruggeworth. “We are particularly focused on new standard products for the open market, and the CDMA market greatly increases the scope of our open-market opportunities.”

The RF73xx product family is compatible with the leading commercially available CDMA baseband and covers all high-volume CDMA frequency bands. It consists of three compact, low-profile 3mm x 3mm x 1mm single-band PA modules covering the cellular, PCS and AWS bands as well as a 4mm x 5mm x 1mm dual-band PA that combines the cellular and PCS bands, enabling a size reduction in dual-band implementations. In each PA, individual bands of amplification are addressed with a band-specific, high-efficiency linear PA that is designed to lower current consumption as output power levels decrease. The improved low-power efficiency is made possible through the use of three power-mode states with chipset-specific digital control interfaces that adjust bias current and optimize the PA for the desired output power range while maintaining linearity. Each PA integrates an output power coupler that eliminates the need for external couplers in chipset implementations that monitor PA output power in order to make transmit power adjustments.

The RF2815 integrates a low noise-figure LNA (0.85dB typical), SAW filter and supporting components in a compact 3.3mm x 2.1mm x 1.0mm module, which also features a CMOS-compatible shutdown mode. Current consumption is tunable via a single resistor, and no external DC-blocking capacitors needed. The GPS LNA module is optimized for both solution size and performance (with a high gain of 13.5dB and IIP3 of +8dBm) and is suited to battery-powered mobile devices, such as portable navigation devices (PNDs) and GPS-enabled CDMA handsets.

The QFN-packaged 2.0mm x 1.3mm x 0.35mm RF1126 single-pole double throw (SPDT) and 2.5mm x 2.5mm x 0.45mm RF1136 single-pole triple throw (SP3T) symmetric pHEMT switches offer insertion loss and linearity suiting signal routing in multi-band CDMA designs implementing receive (Rx) diversity.

Samples of the RF1126, RF1136 and RF2815 are available now, and samples of the RF73xx product family will be available in second-half 2009. RFMD expects revenue generated by its CDMA front-end portfolio to grow throughout 2009.

See related items:

RFMD claims first converged 3G/4G cellular front-end covering nine-band

RFMD adds to RF switch portfolio

RFMD launches GPS LNA module with integrated SAW filter

Search: RF Micro Devices CDMA front-end

Visit: www.rfmd.com