Ampleon has announced a new family of integrated Doherty power amplifier devices aimed at LTE Advanced Pro / 4.5 G massive-MIMO base station applications. Capable of being used as power amplifiers in small cells, these compact and highly efficient devices are much smaller and easier to use than a traditional discrete Doherty amplifier design. They consist of a dual-stage Doherty amplifier with two stages of gain and are matched to 50 ohms at the input and output (on certain variants). Significantly simplifying the design process, these ultra compact amplifiers occupy the minimum of footprint, essential for today’s space constrained applications and offer the performance consistency required in multiple-antenna systems.
The first devices that will be introduced will cover the 1.8 to 2.2 and 2.3 to 2.7 GHz bands, an example being the BLM9D2527-20AB product. This LDMOS-based PQFN packaged device has a P3dB of 43.5 dBm, a gain of more than 28 dB and an efficiency of 44 % at 8 dB OBO when operating in the 2575 to 2634 MHz band. Similar products using a 0.25 um GaN process technology are currently being designed for higher frequencies and will be sampled in the 4th quarter of 2016.
Modularity is a key feature of this new family, allowing the same mechanical format to be re-used for different base station variants using different frequencies and power outputs. Similar products for driver applications are also available that use a symmetric Doherty design for enhanced linearity or multi-band operation.
