Freescale Semiconductor has introduced its next generation of laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor (LDMOS) RF power transistors to meet growing demand for reduced power consumption in cellular transmitters.
Building on its legacy of RF power transistor leadership, Freescale’s eighth generation high voltage (HV8) RF Power LDMOS technology is engineered specifically to meet the stringent demands of high data rate applications such as W-CDMA and WiMAX, as well as emerging standards such as LTE and Multicarrier GSM. The portfolio of devices based on HV8 technology is optimized for operation in advanced power amplifier architectures, which includes Doherty used in combination with digital pre-distortion (DPD).
A primary benefit of Freescale’s HV8 technology is the increase in operating efficiency that helps reduce total power consumption of a base station system, thereby reducing operating costs. In addition, HV8 has been optimized to withstand the more demanding operating environments of advanced system architectures.
“Freescale has realized significant performance improvements that enable LDMOS to continue as the dominant technology for power amplifiers,” said Gavin P. Woods, vice president and general manager of Freescale’s RF Division. “When used in conjunction with advanced architectures or in legacy systems, our HV8 portfolio is expected to enable considerably higher levels of system efficiency in next-generation transmitter designs.”
Initial product offerings will encompass power levels ranging from 100 to 300 W. Additionally, HV8 products are designed to leverage and extend Freescale’s low-cost over molded package portfolio to provide superior value and to cover the major frequency bands ranging from 700 MHz to 2.7 GHz.
Transistors optimized for operation in the 900 MHz frequency band are expected to be the first to benefit from the HV8 RF Power LDMOS technology and to effectively address the stringent requirements of multi-carrier GSM systems. Doherty reference designs have been optimized specifically for the MC-GSM market to showcase the excellent efficiency and DPD-correctable performance, even under some of the most stringent signal configurations.
