Peregrine Semiconductor has introduced the industry’s first reconfigurable RF front end (RFFE). The Global 1 consists of a multimode, multiband (MMMB) power amplifier (PA); post-PA switch; antenna switch; and antenna tuner – based on Peregrine’s UltraCMOS 10 technology platform. It features the industry’s first LTE CMOS PA with the same raw performance as the leading gallium arsenide (GaAs) PAs and has a 33-percent efficiency increase over other CMOS PAs. The solution provides complete reconfigurability with over 40 frequency bands and a more than 5,000-fold increase in the number of possible operating states, a truly reconfigurable RFFE is now a requirement for LTE and a number of other technologies.
Global 1 RFFE System
On a single chip, Peregrine’s Global 1 RFFE system delivers the scalability to easily support higher band counts through low-loss switching and tunability; high isolation to solve interoperability issues; simple, digitally-controlled adaptation across modes and bands; and, most importantly, PA performance equivalent to GaAs.
The UltraCMOS Global 1 system’s reconfigurable RFFE delivers:
- 3-path MMMB PA, post-PA switching, antenna switch and antenna tuner
- Support for envelope tracking
- Common RFFE MIPI interface
UltraCMOS Global 1 PA Performance
Peregrine is the first vendor who has been able to deliver GaAs-level PA performance on CMOS technology. A standard industry benchmark for PA performance is PAE (power-added efficiency) using a WCDMA (voice) waveform at an ACLR (adjacent channel leakage ratio) of -38 dBc. Under these conditions, the performance of the UltraCMOS Global 1 PA approaches 50-percent PAE.
While the UltraCMOS Global 1 PA reaches GaAs-competitive performance levels without the use of envelope tracking, the system natively supports all major envelope tracking solutions currently on the market. The PAE at saturated power (PSAT) provides a good indication on what PAE is possible using an envelope tracking modulator, however, the efficiency enhancements that envelope tracking brings are very band specific. With an envelope tracker, the system efficiency of UltraCMOS Global 1 typically increases 10 percentage points, depending on band.
The benefits of Global 1 extend to help the entire wireless ecosystem by simplifying design, reducing costs and accelerating time to market -
- Platform providers can develop a single reference platform, reducing reference design development costs and validation time.
- OEMs can design a single, global SKU, cutting R&D costs, accelerating time to market, streamlining supply chains and improving inventory management.
- Consumers can enjoy longer battery life, better reception, faster data rates and wider roaming range.
- Wireless operators can reduce capital investments in their network with improved RFFE performance, resulting in better coverage and reductions in dropped calls.
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