Qualcomm Announces SAW/BAW Hexaplexer for Mobile Phones

The Qualcomm/TDK Joint Venture , RF360 Holdings, is launching a hexaplexer for FDD cellular bands 25, 30 and 66, using SAW (surface acoustic wave) and BAW (bulk acoustic wave) technologies. Announcing the product at Mobile World Congress on February 27, Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon said this is the first hexaplexer announced in the industry, scheduled for production in 2018 with phone launches expected in 2019.

The hexaplexer uses three different filter technologies, one for each band: temperature-compensated SAW (TC-SAW), zero temperature coefficient of frequency SAW (TCF-SAW) and BAW:

Referring to Broadcom’s film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR) technology, Amon said Qualcomm’s SAW and BAW technologies are “competitive to FBAR in mid and high bands.”

Covering three bands in a single product, the hexaplexer will reduce cost and the footprint in the phone and will be a key component enabling the carrier aggregation needed for Gbps LTE services. It will also support a single antenna architecture, improving the phone's form factor. According to Qualcomm, the hexaplexer’s low insertion loss will extend the phone's operating time before the battery needs recharging.

The multi-band filter extends filter integration from quadplexers and integrates into Qualcomm’s current power amplifier modules including duplexers (PAMiD) family.

Christian Block, the general manager of Qualcomm’s RF front-end business, said, “Qualcomm Technologies and RF360 Holdings hexaplexer solution integrating our latest BAW/SAW filter technologies is designed to deliver optimal performance while inspiring design flexibility.”