At IMS 2019 in Boston this week, WIN Semiconductors announced the commercial release of its high integration mm-Wave GaAs platform for 5G front ends. The PIH1-10 technology combines an advanced 100 GHz ƒt enhancement-mode pHEMT with monolithic PIN and Schottky diodes to provide best in class mm-Wave performance for all front-end functions. WIN is the first compound semiconductor wafer foundry to commercialize an integrated GaAs platform capable of producing single chip front-ends for 5G handsets and mmWave radio access networks.
The core of PIH1-10 is an E-Mode pHEMT process that provides the gain, power density and efficiency for mmWave transmit power amplifiers, and the noise performance needed in the receive LNA. This versatile single supply transistor can support Tx power levels of 30 dBm and Rx noise figure of 2.5 dB at mmWave frequencies. Furthermore, the integrated PIN diode provides excellent mmWave Tx/Rx switch functionality with <1dB insertion loss, enabling monolithic integration of all front-end functions on a single chip. GaAs technology outperforms BiCMOS in every front-end function, and mmWave single-chip front ends realized in PIH1-10 can reduce array power consumption, simplify thermal management, and extend battery life in 5G user equipment while improving total cost of ownership for mm-Wave access points.
According to David Danzilio, Senior Vice President of WIN Semiconductors Corp, the commercial release of PIH-10 provides a new set of integrated GaAs solutions to improve mm-Wave front end performance. High efficiency Ka-band GaAs power amplifiers, LNAs and low loss switches on a compact single chip front-end will enhance the user experience through improved battery life and better 5G mmWave coverage. Integrated GaAs front-ends can also be used in mmWave access points, and the higher Tx power and efficiency of PIH1-10 enables smaller active antenna arrays with lower total power consumption than existing RAN hardware.
Network owners expect the wireless supply chain to reduce equipment total cost of ownership and provide flexible mmWave active antenna solutions to support multiple deployment scenarios. Higher performance integrated GaAs front-ends provide an optimum path to satisfy these diverse requirements.
WIN Semiconductors is talking about its compound semiconductor RF and mm-Wave solutions in booth 772 at the IMS 2019 event in Boston, Massachusetts from June 4-6.
