- 23rd October 2006 -
GaN WiMAX chips rolling out at major show

Two companies are known to have revealed new chip offerings at the
First, Cree, Inc., announced it is shipping sample quantities of its new 15W packaged GaN HEMT, the CGH27015. Optimized for high efficiency, high gain and wide bandwidth,

Cree’s CGH27015 is designed to provide exceptional linear power and efficiency for North American WiMAX and broadband wireless access applications operating between 2.3 GHz and 2.9 GHz.

Second, Nitronex rolled out the first three members in a family of discrete RF power transistors, based its GaN technology. At the WiMAX World event in Boston, MA, USA, Nitronex said its SIGANTIC GaN-on-Si manufacturing process is now fully qualified for volume production following the completion of all reliability testing.

Its trio of new RF power transistors are for use in power amplifiers in the
3.3-to-3.8-GHz and 2.3-to-2.7-GHz bands of the WiMAX market.

• NPT35050 is a 50W, 28Vt device with an average output power of 6W from 3.3-3.8-GHz and a saturated power output at 3.5-GHz of 65W. It is packaged in an air-cavity plastic package with a copper-moly-copper flange for enhanced thermal performance.
• NPT35015 and NPT25015 are 15W, 28V power transistors operating from 3.3-3.8-GHz and 2.3-2.7-GHz, respectively.

All of these parts take advantage of small, cost-effective plastic overmould packaging from Amkor Technology Inc., without any modification to its standard processes.
Christopher Rauh, VP Sales and Marketing at Nitronex said: "The WiMAX market requires combinations of power, efficiency, frequency and bandwidth that are beyond the specs of the current cellular market. The ideal choice is GaN-on-Si FET technology, because it enables base station OEMs to optimize bandwidth, power and efficiency at attractive sizes and costs."

The Cree announcement involves a chip which has been optimized for high efficiency, high gain and wide bandwidth, Cree’s CGH27015 is designed to provide exceptional linear power and efficiency for North American WiMAX and broadband wireless access applications operating between 2.3 GHz and 2.9 GHz.

The CGH27015 typically produces 2.5 W of average output power and 24% drain efficiency over the frequency range of 2.3 GHz to 2.9 GHz. This represents up to 30% improvement in device efficiency when compared with traditional technologies such as silicon LDMOS or GaAs under WiMAX signals and requirements (802.16-2004), Cree reckons. It also features 14.5dB of small signal gain and 2-percent error vector magnitude (EVM) under orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation when operated at 28V.

“The release of the CGH27015 demonstrates Cree’s continued commitment to provide a comprehensive line of high-performance GaN RF products for the WiMAX and broadband wireless access markets,” said Jim Milligan, Cree product manager for wide bandgap RF products. “GaN is an ideal material for applications that operate under high-power conditions and must meet high efficiency and stringent linearity requirements, like WiMAX and other applications operating between 2.5 and 6 GHz.”

Web: www.cree.com and www.nitronex.com