RF Micro Devices Inc. (Greensboro, NC), a provider of proprietary radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) for wireless communications applications, announced achievement of a major milestone toward the commercialization of gallium nitride (GaN) RF power technology. The company has successfully grown, fabricated and packaged GaN power transistors achieving 28W performance with continuous wave (CW) operation at 20V. The GaN power transistors are fabricated from the current 0.9-micron process and exhibit 10dB of linear gain. The transistors were used to develop 20W CW power amplifiers (PAs) for UMTS applications.
RF Micro Devices has also demonstrated 7W wideband GaN PAs designed for DCS (1,800MHz to 1,880MHz), PCS (1,930MHz to 1,990MHz) and UMTS (2,110MHz to 2,170MHz) wireless infrastructure applications. The GaN PAs exhibit 11dB of gain at 20V operation, with gain slope of ±0.2dB over the entire range and better than ±0.1dB over the DCS and PCS bands. The matched power amplifier exhibits an output return loss of -12dB over the band with a typical input return loss of -11dB at midband.
