Avago Technologies, a supplier of analog interface components for communications, industrial and consumer applications, has announced the availability of its MGA-634P8 ultra LNA for base station (BTS) RF front-end design. With the addition of the 1500 to 2300 MHz MGA-634P8, the company expands its LNA series to cover new GSM, TDS-CDMA and CDMA cellular infrastructure applications.

The wireless infrastructure industry must provide optimum coverage with the best signal quality in a crowded spectrum. Receiver sensitivity is the most critical requirement in a BTS receiver’s design. LNA selection, in particular the first-stage LNA, greatly affects the BTS receiver’s performance. Low noise figure is a key design goal. The MGA-634P8 has a best-in-class noise figure (NF) of 0.44 dB, 0.69 dB maximum, at 1900 MHz.

Another key design factor is linearity, which affects the receiver’s ability to distinguish between closely spaced wanted and spurious signals. Output third-order intercept, OIP3, is used to specify linearity. At 1900 MHz and operating from 5 V with a 48 mA bias current, Avago’s proprietary GaAs Enhancement-mode pHEMT process technology gives a noise figure of 0.48 dB and an OIP3 of 36 dBm. The low NF and high OIP3 of the MGA-634P8 gives designers more margin for the BTS receiver path. The added performance is achieved with very low quiescent power, approximately 240 mW.

With built-in active bias circuitry, MGA-634P8 operating current is adjustable. This allows designers to make tradeoffs between operating current and output linearity while maintaining an optimum noise figure. BTS designers can meet various design needs and regional requirements with the same Avago LNA.

The MGA-634P8 is housed in a quad flat no-lead plastic (QFN) package with a small 4 mm2 footprint and slim 0.75 mm thickness. It also shares the same package footprint, pinout and external matching network of the existing 900 MHz MGA-633P8 LNA. A common PCB design can therefore be used for BTS RF front-end designs that operate in different frequency bands, allowing different geographic markets to be served by one basic PCB design.