The PE188200 from pSemi is an 8-Channel Beamforming Front-End IC that operates in the 5G n257 band from 26.5 to 29.5 GHz. It has two independently controllable RF chains of four channels supporting four dual-polarity antennas or eight single-polarity antennas. This beamforming IC has integrated power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, splitter/combiners, 6-bit phase/attenuation control, and phase & amplitude beamformers. It has an on-chip memory that holds 512 beams and on-chip storage for up to 32 state modes that allow the flexible definition of modes such as RX, TX, idle, and sleep.
The PE188200 operates in Time division duplex (TDD) mode and supports pass-through operation to control several chips on the same bus for ease of multi-chip control in large antenna arrays. It can be controlled via a 4-wire SPI bus interface. This IC is available as a die and is ideal for 5G base stations, 5G customer premises equipment (CPE), and point-to-point radio applications.
