News

13 June 2006

 

RFMD's GaN HEMTs for cellular infrastructure and WiMAX

RFMD has introduced a family of gallium nitride (GaN) High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) high-power transistors, which cellular infrastructure and WiMAX base station customers are already sampling. According to the company, the sampling is due to RFMD’s achievement of a baseline 0.5um GaN high-power transistor process.

"For cellular infrastructure and WiMAX base station OEMs dependant on maximizing power and efficiency, RFMD's GaN transistors provide higher at-package matching impedance, higher power density and wider bandwidth performance when compared with silicon LDMOS devices," said Bill Pratt, co-founder, CTO and corporate VP of RFMD. "In addition, RFMD is the world's largest manufacturer of GaAs wafers and is able to achieve distinct cost advantages by utilizing our high-volume manufacturing environment at our Greensboro, North Carolina, headquarters."

The devices exhibit peak drain efficiency up to 67% at UMTS, and up to 60% at WiMAX frequency bands. RFMD has achieved high gain of 16dB, high power density of up to 4W/mm at 28V and 1,000 hour high temperature reliability results.

The GaN HEMT transistors are targeted to the UMTS or 3G base station segment and include the RF3820 (8W), RF3912 (60W), RF3913 (90W) and RF3914 (120W). RFMD's GaN HEMT transistors targeted to the emerging WiMAX base station segment include the 2.5 GHz RF3916 (50W), RF3917 (75W), RF3918 (100W) and 3.5 GHz RF3821 (8W), RF3919 (50W).

Visit: http://www.rfmd.com