3 March 2014

Peregrine demos UltraCMOS Global 1 PA at Mobile World Congress

At the 2014 GSMA Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain (24-27 February), Peregrine Semiconductor Corp of San Diego, CA, USA, a fabless provider of radio-frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) based on silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) and silicon-on-insulator (SOI), hosted the first public demonstrations of its UltraCMOS Global 1 power amplifier (PA), which was launched at the beginning of February.

The UltraCMOS Global 1 is claimed to be the first LTE CMOS PA to deliver the performance level of gallium arsenide (GaAs) PAs, as well as offering the unique benefit of being integrated onto a single chip with Peregrine’s Global 1 system, the first reconfigurable RF front end (RFFE). Only with an integrated reconfigurable RFFE can 4G LTE platform providers and OEMs create a single-SKU (stock keeping unit) handset design for global markets, the firm adds.

To support over 40 frequency bands and a more than 5000-fold increase in the number of possible operating states, a truly reconfigurable RFFE is now a requirement, says Peregrine. This level of reconfigurability is only feasible with a CMOS process, reckons the firm.

The entire UltraCMOS Global 1 system - multimode, multiband (MMMB) power amplifier (PA); post-PA switch; antenna switch; and antenna tuner - is based on Peregrine’s UltraCMOS 10 technology platform (launched last November), which leverages 25 years of RF expertise with proven performance demonstrated by more than 2 billion RF SOI units shipped.

Peregrine says that, before now, no vendor has been able to deliver GaAs-level PA performance in a CMOS PA, which prevented CMOS PAs from competing in the performance-driven LTE handset market. The demonstration showed how the UltraCMOS Global 1 PA has what is claimed to be the same raw performance as the leading GaAs PAs, as well as a 33% increase in efficiency over other CMOS PAs, without enhancements from envelope tracking or digital pre-distortion (which is often used when benchmarking CMOS PAs with GaAs PAs).

See related items:

Peregrine challenging GaAs PA market with UltraCMOS Global 1

Peregrine introduces UltraCMOS 10 technology to advance RF design with SOI

Tags: Peregrine CMOS SOI

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