News

16 February 2009

 

Skyworks unveils smallest WCDMA power amplifiers with integrated directional couplers

At this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (16-19 February), Skyworks Solutions Inc of Woburn, MA, USA has announced sample availability of a family of single- and dual-band WCDMA power amplifiers (PA) for universal mobile telecoms system (UMTS) applications that integrate the directional coupler, significantly reducing the phone board footprint and bill-of-material costs. Volume production is scheduled to start this quarter.

The firm’s expanded Intera portfolio of front-end solutions now includes five of the what are claimed to be smallest and highest-performance UMTS PAs that support bands I, II, IV, V and VIII:

• SKY77186 for band I (1920-1980MHz);
• SKY77187 for band II (1850-1910MHz);
• SKY77188 for bands V & VI (824-849MHz);
• SKY77189 for band VIII (880-915MHz);
• SKY77191 for bands IV, IX & X (1710-1785MHz);

plus two dual-band PAs that support the most popular band combinations (bands I/VIII and II/V):

• SKY77195 for bands I & VIII (1920-1980MHz and 880-915MHz).
• SKY77196 for bands II & V (1850-1910MHz and 824-849MHz).

“Our newest family of power amplifiers offers significant benefits to handset OEMs who must constantly address size, cost and performance issues across a broad range of frequencies,” says Gregory L. Waters, executive VP & general manager, front-end solutions. The compact solutions provide seamless operation and offer high power-added efficiency (PAE) at mid and low powers, significantly increasing talk times, the firm claims.

The five 3mm x 3mm solutions are fully matched, 10-pad surface-mount modules. High efficiencies attained throughout the entire power range deliver talk-time advantages. The modules also meet stringent spectral linearity requirements of high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) data transmission with high PAE.

The two 4mm x 5mm dual-band PA modules provide solutions for these increasingly popular phone models. Skyworks’ integration techniques pack most of the external passive components into the modules, requiring only two external bypassing capacitors for the two bands compared to 10-14 passives typically required with two single-band PA modules. This results in bill-of-materials count savings as well as up to 40-50% board area savings, claims Skyworks, enabling OEMs to devote more functionality to the phone without increasing its size.

The single gallium arsenide (GaAs) microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) contains all active circuitry in the module. The MMIC contains on-board bias circuitry, as well as input and inter-stage matching circuits. Output match into a 50-ohm load is realized off-chip within the module package to optimize efficiency and power performance.

The PA modules are manufactured with Skyworks’ indium gallium phosphide (InGaP) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) bipolar field-effect transistor (BiFET) process, which provides for all positive voltage DC supply operation while maintaining high efficiency and good linearity.

See related items:

Skyworks introduces SKY65038-70LF LNA

Skyworks claims first multi-band, multi-mode FDD/TDD PA for 4G LTE

Search: Skyworks WCDMA PA InGaP HBT

Visit: www.skyworksinc.com