MACOM Launches MAGb Series of GaN Power Transistors for Wireless Macro Basestations

M/A-COM Technology Solutions Inc., a leading supplier of high-performance analog RF, microwave, millimeterwave and photonic semiconductor products, today announced its highly-anticipated MAGb series of GaN power transistors for use in wireless macro basestations.

Leveraging MACOM’s Gen4 GaN technology, the new MAGb series is the industry’s first commercial basestation-optimized family of GaN transistors to achieve leadership efficiency, bandwidth and power gain with a linearity and cost structure like LDMOS, and a path to better than LDMOS cost at scaled volume production levels.

The MAGb series of power transistors target all cellular bands within the 1.8 GHz to 3.8 GHz frequency range. Initial entries in the product series include single-ended transistors providing up to 400 W peak power in small packages, dual-transistors and single-package Doherty configuration providing up to 700 W peak power in both symmetric and asymmetric power options. This product series delivers power efficiency improvement of up to 10% and package size reduction greater than 15% over legacy LDMOS offerings. Based on linear Gen 4 technology, the MAGb is easy to linearize and correct with digital-pre-distortion (DPD) schemes compared to other GaN technologies.

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 200 MHz 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. It is housed in a small AC-400 ceramic package and delivers over 160 W of peak power and a peak efficiency of 74% with fundamental tuning only and linear gain over 19 dB across the 500 MHz band.

Second in this series is the MAGB-101822-240B0S, which has double the output power of the MAGB-101822-120B0S with peak power over 320 W, 19 dB of linear gain and peak efficiency over 72% 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% when the devices are presented with the proper harmonic terminations.

This new series unleashes the efficiency, size and broadband advantages of MACOM’s Gen4 GaN. It enables wireless carriers to deploy the latest LTE releases and significantly reduce operating expenses at highly competitive price points, with a scalable supply chain combined with MACOM’s best in class applications and design support team with decades of experience.

“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 Vice President 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.”

To schedule a private demonstration of MACOM’s MAGb products at Mobile World Congress (MWC 2016, February 22 – 25^th, Barcelona), contact your local Sales Representative. MACOM will also be demonstrating this technology at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2016, May 22 – 27^th, San Francisco).