27 February 2012

RFMD adds 2nd-generation ultra-high-efficiency PAs for LTE

At the 2012 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain (27 February to 1 March), RF Micro Devices Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA has announced the expansion of its ultra-high-efficiency power amplifier (PA) product portfolio to include six 4G LTE PAs. Complementing RFMD’s first-generation family of ultra-high-efficiency PAs for WCDMA applications, the new PAs are claimed to deliver superior peak efficiency and current consumption in LTE mode.

RFMD's ultra-high-efficiency product family now covers WCDMA bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8, and LTE bands 4, 7, 11, 13, 17, 18, 20, and 21, helping to accelerate the global reach of LTE in mobile devices such as smartphones and other high-performance data-centric connected devices, and enhancing data throughput, battery life and thermal performance for mobile broadband consumer applications.

The PAs deliver peak efficiency of 42-44% in LTE mode, which is claimed to be significantly above competing product portfolios. The LTE PAs also offer high linearity at the highest power conditions, enabling bandwidths up to 20MHz and resulting in higher data transfers.

In both 3G and 4G LTE, the PAs leverage RFMD’s RF systems expertise and RF power management to deliver what is claimed to be best-in-class current consumption across all power levels and in all modes and bands. Power management is expected to be increasingly critical in 2012, says RFMD, as leading cellular solutions begin to adopt advanced power management schemes such as average power tracking (APT) and envelope tracking (ET).

“As RFMD’s customers continue to push the limits on band count and form factor, this is creating an unprecedented opportunity for RFMD to solve the increasingly complex RF challenges related to battery life and thermal performance,” says Eric Creviston, president of RFMD's Cellular Products Group (CPG). “We expect strong growth and market share gains in 3G and 4G LTE as our ultra-high-efficiency product portfolio continues to expand.”

Tags: RFMD PAs

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