25 May 2015

Qorvo's high-power 5GHz 802.11ac PAs boost performance for home and CPE applications

At the 2015 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS) in Phoenix, Arizona (16-22 May), Qorvo Inc of Greensboro, NC and Hillsboro, OR, USA (a provider of RF solutions for mobile, infrastructure and aerospace/defense applications) launched a family of high-power, high-efficiency 5GHz 802.11ac Wi-Fi power amplifiers (PAs) for home applications, including access points, gateways, routers and set-top boxes.

"The Wi-Fi market continues to be one of the fastest RF growth segments," says James Klein, president of Infrastructure and Defense Products at Qorvo. "Qorvo's power amplifiers enable the range and throughput capabilities for the industry's highest-performing Wi-Fi solutions," he claims. "Qorvo's technology is now built into the world's leading SoC [system-on-chip] reference design that will power the connected devices for the Internet of Things."

The RFPA5512, RFPA5522, RFPA5542, TQP5523 and TQP5525 family of 802.11ac power amplifiers offer high-power performance at 5GHz over a range of linear power levels while minimizing power consumption. Notably, with up to eight streams and multi-user multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology, the end-product has the ability to support multiple devices and a higher number of simultaneous users. The technology also connects wireless devices across longer-range access points with increased data throughput, supporting applications such as broadcast-level streaming capabilities.

Qorvo's Wi-Fi power amplifiers provide what is claimed to be market-leading power-added efficiency (PAE) of 17% for 802.11ac and greater that 20% for 802.11n. The additional PAE savings of 4-5% over previous generations significantly reduces thermal issues in new Wi-Fi applications, such as MIMO. Moreover, the integrated input and output matching eliminates the need for external components, greatly reducing the layout area, bill of materials, and manufacturing costs for customer applications. The amplifiers feature an industry-standard footprint to conform to existing designs and are gaining traction with the leading Wi-Fi chipset manufacturers, says Qorvo.

The family of power amplifiers delivers system-level compliance in band-edge performance to meet the upcoming Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations and significant performance requirements related to radiated harmonics. The devices are sampling in a 4mm x 4mm QFN package that meets or exceeds the power requirements of IEEE 802.11a/n/ac RF systems.

Tags: Qorvo

Visit: www.qorvo.com