News Article
Nitronex announces smallest gallium nitride broadband 5W PA
The firm says its NPA1003 GaN-on-Silicon MMIC enables the world’s smallest 5W 20-1500 MHz PA solution.
Nitronex, a designer and manufacturer of GaN based RF solutions for high performance applications in the defence, communications, cable TV, and industrial & scientific markets, says it has developed the industry’s smallest broadband 5W PA solution.
The NPA1003 is a GaN PA MMIC and features a 4mm x 4mm thermally-enhanced QFN package with RF input and output matched to 50 Ω. The highly integrated NPA1003 GaN MMIC only requires an external resistor and inductor to provide bias. With output power over 5W from 20 to 1500MHz and typical efficiency of over 50%, the overall solution size is less than 0.25 square inches.
“The new NPA1003 has created a pull in the market that we fully anticipated it would,” commented Gary Blackington, VP of Sales & Marketing at Nitronex. “This new device has filled a market void with the right power, gain, frequency response, compact size, and ease of use all at the right price point. We have already achieved several design-ins at top tier accounts.”
“Nitronex’s MMIC process was established under a joint development agreement with a large military contractor, resulting in a fully-qualified, production-ready process in July 2009. We have worked with multiple strategically selected customers since 2009 to develop and productize custom MMICs and have shipped more than 50,000 production devices to customers,” said Ray Crampton, VP of Engineering at Nitronex.
“Nitronex’s proprietary GaN-on-Silicon process has a significant advantage over our competitors using SiC substrates. Our superior starting substrate quality and cost structure allow us to develop high performance, large area MMICs at competitive prices which gives us the freedom to solve customer problems in ways our competitors can not."
Nitronex’s qualified MMIC process is based on a 28V, 0.5μm gate length GaN HEMT and features high voltage capacitors, air bridges, through-wafer vias, nichrome and epi resistors, and two levels of metal interconnect. Furthermore, a 3.5μm plated gold top metallization results in low loss inductors, and a high resistivity silicon substrate is used which supports low loss transmission lines to over 20 GHz.
