At the 2017 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Qorvo's mobile products business made three product announcements:

New RF front-ends for mid-tier phones

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Qorvo has added two RF front-ends (RFFE) to its RF Flex™ family, describing them as fifth-generation front-end modules (FEM) that meet the challenging requirements of carrier aggregation (CA) — intra-band uplink CA as well as three-carrier inter-band downlink CA — and support all major 4G baseband processors:

The QM56022 features low-, medium- and high-band power amplifiers (PA) and band-select switches in the most popular footprint for mid-tier smartphones, and it supports the new standard for Power Class 2 high performance user equipment (HPUE) on band 41.

The QM57508 contains an antenna coupler and 2G PA module that is optimized to overcome the post-PA losses with the most complex handset antenna configurations. It supports three-antenna architectures, has four high-band, five mid-band and seven low-band TRx ports and includes a low-loss, high throw-count switch that supports CA.

The RF Flex family combines performance with design flexibility so phone manufacturers can quickly develop and launch mid-tier smartphones, the largest and fastest-growing segment of the smartphone market. Smartphone manufacturers can customize the RF Flex Gen-5 portfolio by adding Qorvo's premium filters for regional coverage.

RF Fusion design wins in gigabit phone

Four of Qorvo's RF Fusion™ FEMs were designed in a recently launched gigabit phone. Qorvo did not identify the manufacturer, although coincidentally, ZTE announced a gigabit phone at MWC.

Qorvo did identify the FEMs designed in the new phone:

  • QM52042 3.5 GHz PA, supporting TD-LTE bands 42 and 43.
  • QM7500, which contains multimode, multiband PAs, FDD and TD-LTE T/R switches and filters for bands 38, 40 and 41. The PAs support intra-band uplink and inter-band downlink CA, advanced power tracking and envelope tracking (ET).
  • QM78013, which combines multimode, multiband PAs, mode switching, a band 25 duplexer, a multiplexer capable of multi-downlink carrier aggregation for bands 1, 3 and 4, antenna switch and coupler. The PAs support intra-band uplink and inter-band downlink CA, advanced power tracking and ET.
  • QM48858 Wi-Fi FEM, integrating a 5 GHz PA, LNA, switch, diplexer, coupler and 2.4 GHz BAW coexistence filter.

5G RFFE

Qorvo also announced what they claim as the industry's first 5G RFFE. The QM19000 "delivers high linearity, ultra-low latency and extremely high throughput to meet or exceed the developing requirements of upcoming 5G applications," according to a company release.

Eric Creviston, president of the company's mobile products group, said, "We are proud to introduce the industry's first 5G-capable RF front-end, developed in close collaboration with a leading global chipset provider."