Epic Communications Inc. announces that it has released three WiMAX power amplifier products supporting both IEEE 802.16d-2004 fixed and 802.16e-2005 Wave 2 mobile WiMAX standards for emerging WiMAX mobile and fixed applications. These three PAs feature high linearity, miniature packages and fully-matched performance with minimum external components.
Each of these three PAs delivers high linearity high efficiency output power across a broad frequency bandwidth, which allows designers to use a single PA to cover the entire band of specific WiMAX application. Previously, multiple narrow band PA parts with associated matching and biasing components were required to achieve similar performance. These three PA parts cover frequency ranges of 2.3 to 2.7 GHz (PA2501B), 3.4 to 3.8 GHz (PA3501B) and 4.9 to 5.9 GHz (PA5306B), respectively. These frequency bands are broadly adopted by most worldwide WiMAX broadband service providers at present.
A high-performance PA is one of the most critical components of RF front-end circuits for WiMAX devices. Epicom’s WiMAX PA parts integrate a GaAs Power Amplifier Circuit, Power Detector, Bias Control Circuit, Temperature Compensation Control Circuit and Step Attenuator. Basically, WiMAX Baseband chip generates an OFDMA signal that is converted into an RF signal in the transceiver, and then further amplified by the WiMAX PA to be transmitted via the antenna to a nearby WiMAX AP or base station. These three PA parts feature excellent performance under broad bias voltage and temperature range. Furthermore, the integrated 25 dB step attenuator offers both high-gain and low-gain modes to improve power-saving performance. The external components for bias and matching circuits are also greatly simplified to cut down RBOM cost and shrink the required PC board area and size.
WiMAX device manufacturers will be able to employ Epicom’s WiMAX PA parts easily in their diverse WiMAX-related designs and applications such as WiMAX CPE, embedded WiMAX Network Interface Cards (NIC), WiMAX USB dongles, WiMAX-enabled smartphones, Netbook (MID), and even Electronic Books to enable the WiMAX connectivity and enhance their product performance and cost effectiveness.
