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News

26 July 2007

 

RFMD begins production of Polaris 3

To support customer orders, RF Micro Devices Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA has started volume production of Polaris 3 Total Radio (a fully integrated quad-band EDGE RF system solution that offers high levels of RF functionality). Commercial shipments are expected to begin in the September quarter, and production volumes are forecast to grow sequentially throughout 2008.

The start of commercial production represents “the culmination of years of technology development, as we have assembled the design, manufacturing and packaging competencies necessary to supply large production volumes of the industry's most highly integrated RF system solution”, says president and CEO Bob Bruggeworth. “Our Polaris 3 RF solution enables handset manufacturers to quickly and cost-effectively deploy a high-performance, system-in-package (SiP) RF implementation across multiple handsets and market tiers,” he adds.

“Polaris 3 is a highly integrated, complete system-in-package solution that performs all the critical functions of the RF section of a handset, including the cellular transceiver, power amplification, filtering and transmit/receive switch, in two easy-to-place modules shielded by advanced integrated RF shielding technology,” says Eric Creviston, corporate VP of RFMD’s cellular products group. Polaris 3’s highly integrated radio transceiver module incorporates a single-chip CMOS EDGE transceiver, the full crystal oscillator and all necessary receive filter functionality. It also features RFMD’s front-end technology (including the power amplifier and transmit/receive switch) as well as RFMD’s patent-pending integrated RF shielding technology.

When implemented, Polaris 3 eliminates the need for costly and cumbersome metal RF shields on the phone board while reducing component placements by about 80%, leading to savings in solution size and height, it is claimed. Polaris 3 hence reduces the RF footprint by about 50% compared to competing solutions, as well as offering handset makers the benefits of platform flexibility, ease-of-use, reduced size, low cost and high performance, Creviston claims.

RFMD also says that Polaris solutions command about three times the dollar content of EDGE cellular front ends.

See related items:

RFMD’s revenues fall 11%, but forecasts 9-16% bounceback this quarter

RFMD expands Beijing assembly facility’s capabilities

RFMD prices $350m private placement; fiscal-year revenue to exceed $1bn, but forecasts slowdown next quarter

RFMD launches POLARIS 3 TOTAL RADIO transceiver for EDGE

Visit: http://www.rfmd.com