15 December 2010

Avago adds to 0.1W and 0.25W gain blocks with 0.5W variants

Avago Technologies has launched two 0.5-watt gain blocks — featuring what is claimed to be high linearity, high gain, superior gain flatness and low power dissipation — that expand its power amplifier family targeting cellular infrastructure applications. The MGA-31589 and MGA-31689 address cellular and WiMAX wireless base-station and other wireless systems operating at 450–1500MHz and 1500–3000MHz, respectively.

The MGA-31x89 power amplifier family is optimized for frequency in order to deliver improved performance across all the major cellular bands — GSM, CDMA, and UMTS — plus next-generation LTE bands. The new gain blocks join the 0.25-watt MGA-31189 and MGA-31289 devices and 0.10-watt MGA-31389 and MGA-31489 devices to serve applications from 50MHz to 3000MHz.

MGA-31x89 devices are all available in compact, industry-standard SOT-89 packages. Sharing a common footprint and PCB layout allows a single design to support multiple frequencies and geographic markets with a choice of output power. The gain blocks can also replace existing solutions as a pin-to-pin, drop-in replacement offering better linearity and power performance.

Enabled by Avago’s proprietary, 0.25µm gallium arsenide enhancement-mode pHEMT process, the devices’ high gain can reduce the total number of RF stages needed.

At the typical operating condition of 5V and 146mA, the MGA-31589 delivers 20.4dB gain, 45.3dBm output third-order intercept point (OIP3), 27.2dBm output power at 1dB gain compression (P1dB) and 1.9dB noise figure at 900MHz.

At the typical operating condition of 5V and 168mA, the MGA-31689 delivers performance of 18.1dB gain, 44.9dBm output third-order intercept point (OIP3), 27.6dBm output power at 1dB gain compression (P1dB) and 1.9dB noise figure at 1900MHz.

Both the MGA-31589 and MGA-31689 also deliver gain flatness of less than 0.2dB across 100MHz bandwidth. Also, both input and output are pre-matched, requiring minimal external RF matching components.

Both high-gain power amplifiers are priced at $2.63 each in 10,000-piece quantities. Samples, a demonstration board and production quantities are currently available.

Tags: Avago GaAs pHEMT

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