RFMD® introduced a family of Gallium Nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) high power transistors and is sampling to top-tier cellular infrastructure and WiMAX base station customers. The sampling of these transistors represents the achievement of a baseline 0.5 um GaN high power transistor process by RFMD.


“The infrastructure market is a key growth area for RFMD that leverages our existing technological and manufacturing expertise,” said Jeff Shealy, vice president, Infrastructure Product Group for RFMD. “With the achievement of our baseline GaN process technology, we are positioned to provide customers with the high power, broadband solutions that are needed to meet their growing demand for more cost-effective and more efficient deployment of next-generation wireless infrastructure.”

“For cellular infrastructure and WiMAX base station OEMs dependant on maximizing power and efficiency, RFMD’s GaN transistors provide higher at-package matching impedance, higher power density and wider bandwidth performance when compared with silicon LDMOS devices,” said Bill Pratt, co-founder, chief technical officer and corporate vice president for RFMD. “In addition, RFMD is the world’s largest manufacturer of GaAs wafers and is able to achieve distinct cost advantages by utilizing our high volume manufacturing environment at our Greensboro, North Carolina, headquarters.”

These high power devices show excellent peak drain efficiency up to 67 percent at UMTS and up to 60 percent at WiMAX frequency bands. RFMD has achieved high gain of 16 dB, high power density of up to 4 W/mm at 28 V and 1,000 hour high temperature reliability results.

RFMD’s GaN HEMT transistors for the wireless cellular market are targeted to the UMTS or 3G base station segment and include the RF3820 (8 W), RF3912 (60 W), RF3913 (90 W) and RF3914 (120 W). RFMD’s GaN HEMT transistors targeted to the emerging WiMAX base station segment include the 2.5 GHz RF3916 (50 W), RF3917 (75 W), RF3918 (100 W) and 3.5 GHz RF3821 (8 W), RF3919 (50 W).