GaN RF market to double over next five years
GaN RF devices market will double over the next five years, led by GaN's adoption across various market segments, according to Yole Développement in its 'GaN RF Devices Market: Applications, Players, Technology, and Substrates 2016 - 2022' report.
In 2015, there was a large increase in wireless infrastructure market sales driven by the massive adoption of LTE networks in China. By the end of 2015, the total RF GaN market was close to $300 million. Sales will likely not soar as high over the next two years, but growth will continue, according to Yole, mainly driven by increased adoption of GaN technology in the wireless infrastructure and defence markets.
A significant boost will occur around 2019 - 2020, led by the implementation of 5G networks. Market size will be multiplied by 2.5 by the end of 2022, posting a CAGR of 14 percent from 2016 - 2022.
Wireless infrastructure, now representing more than half of GaN's total market, will grow at expected 16 percent CAGR for 2016 - 2022. Though GaN was originally developed to support governmental military and space projects, we'll soon be able to say that mainstream commercial markets have fully embraced this novel technology.
GaN's increased implementation in base stations and wireless backhaul stems from the growing demand for data traffic and higher operating frequencies and bandwidths. In future network designs, new technologies like carrier aggregation and massive MIMO will actually put GaN in a superior position compared to existing LDMOS. GaN products have not yet covered the wireless infrastructure market's full spectrum, and we see more opportunities in the higher-frequency range.
GaN-on-SiC is present in more than 95 percent of total commercial devices using GaN. GaN-on-SiC's maturity has led it to dominate GaN-on-Silicon at present, and most GaN RF implementations are realised with GaN-on-SiC devices. GaN-on-SiC is an appealing choice for markets that require higher performance and are less cost-sensitive, and many companies choose GaN-on-SiC for their new designs and products. Meanwhile, LDMOS and GaAs remain the main technologies used for high-volume applications with lower performance requirements.
But the door hasn't closed on GaN-on-Silicon, say Yole's analysts. MA-COM is pushing its GaN-on-Silicon products and just announced its Gen4 GaN product for base stations, with an LDMOS-like cost structure. From 2016 - 2020, Yole envisions opportunities for GaN-on-Silicon in commercial markets like LTE, SATCOM terminals, CATV, and RF energy, with GaN-on-SiC still the go-to technology for GaN RF. The situation could change drastically, but for now GaN-on-Silicon remains a challenger to the incumbent GaN-on-SiC solution.
