Macom aims to make GaN-based PAs mainstream
Macom has launched its anticipated MAGb series of GaN power transistors for use in wireless macro basestations.
Based on the company's Gen4 GaN technology, the new series is claimed to be the first commercial basestation-optimised family of GaN transistors to achieve a linearity and cost structure like LDMOS, and a path to better than LDMOS cost at scaled volume production levels.
"We believe that Gen4 GaN positions Macom at the vanguard of a transformative evolution in basestation power amplifiers, enabling a price/performance breakthrough that can't be achieved with alternative semiconductor technologies," said Preet Virk, senior VP and general manager, Carrier Networks, Macom.
"We anticipate that the wireless application expertise and commercial manufacturing scalability that Macom brings to this domain via the MAGb product platform will vault GaN-based PAs into the mainstream, unlocking a host of benefits for the next generation of wireless basestations," he added.
The MAGb series of power transistors target all cellular bands within the 1.8GHz to 3.8GHz frequency range. Initial entries in the product series include single-ended transistors providing up to 400W peak power in small packages, dual-transistors and single-package Doherty configuration providing up to 700W peak power in both symmetric and asymmetric power options.
This product series is said to deliver power efficiency improvement of up to 10 percent and package size reduction greater than 15 percent over legacy LDMOS offerings. The MAGb is easy to linearise and correct with digital-pre-distortion (DPD) schemes compared to other GaN technologies, says Macom.
The power transistors in the MAGb family cover much wider bandwidth than LDMOS, reducing the number of parts needed to cover the major cellular bands. The new product family delivers these advantages while simplifying the Doherty implementation over LDMOS-based transistors and maintaining over 200MHz of video bandwidth.
The MAGB-101822-120B0S is the first product in this family and covers 500 MHz of RF bandwidth between 1.7GHz to 2.2GHz. Second in this series is the MAGB-101822-240B0S, which has double the output power of the MAGB-101822-120B0S with peak power over 320W, 19dB of linear gain and peak efficiency over 72 percent with fundamental tuning only across the 500 MHz RF bandwidth, housed in the AC-780 ceramic package.
The peak efficiency of both parts can be further improved to well above 80 percent when the devices are presented with the proper harmonic terminations, according to the company.
