MACOM Technology Solutions Inc. announced its new MAGM series of GaN on Si-based MMIC power amplifiers (PA) optimized for massive MIMO antenna systems targeted for 5G wireless base station infrastructure. Providing wideband performance simultaneously covering bands 42 and 43 with flat power and superior power efficiency compared to legacy LDMOS technology, MACOM’s new MAGM PA Series delivers GaN performance at LDMOS-like cost structures at scaled volume production levels in fully integrated MMIC packaging for simplified, cost-effective 5G base station manufacturing.

MAGM Series MMIC PAs are specifically tailored for mainstream 5G base station architectures, meeting and surpassing the power density and thermal requirements of 64-element massive MIMO antenna arrays, with a pathway to exceeding the performance of LDMOS technology, at scaled volume level production cost structures and supply capacities that cannot be achieved with competing GaN on SiC technology. Designed with MACOM proprietary wideband circuit topology, the PAs meet the stringent 5G TDD linearity requirement using off the shelf digital-pre-distortion (DPD) systems. Compared to earlier generation multichip-format GaN on Si modules, costs are further lowered through a reduction in packaging and design complexity. Leveraging this ideal performance and cost with the capacity scale manufacturing afforded by MACOM’s partnership with STMicroelectronics, MACOM’s GaN on Si solutions are expected to be able to significantly improve customers’ time to market.

“MACOM’s new MAGM Series PAs combine the unique performance and cost benefits inherent to GaN on Si technology with the MMIC packaging efficiencies needed for commercial volume-scale 5G basestation manufacturing and deployment,” said Amer Droubi, director product marketing, MACOM. “Our continuous innovation in this domain sets a strong foundation for next-generation multifunction GaN on Si MMICs targeted to enable fully-integrated front-end modules for massive MIMO 5G basestation architectures.”