GaN on SiC – A Key Technology for 5G Cellular Power Amplifiers

The power amplifier (PA) has many challenges in 5th generation cellular infrastructure transceivers at sub-6 GHz TDD frequency bands. It should be able to transmit multi-carrier and multi-mode signals that occupy the full frequency span of a given communication spectrum, while also meeting challenging power, efficiency, and linearity requirements. The demand on the PAs increases significantly in terms of power-added efficiency and bandwidth compared to previous generation systems and makes GaN on Silicon Carbide (SiC) the ideal technology choice for the PA.

Attendees will learn:

• Why we need new spectrum for 5G <6 GHz applications
• Requirements and challenges for 5G power amplifiers
• Benefits of GaN for cellular power amplifier designs
• How Wolfspeed enables 5G with a vertically integrated GaN front-end

Speaker:

Dr. Abdulrhman M. S. Ahmed
Sr. RF Systems Design/Architecture Engineer
Wolfspeed, A Cree Company

Dr. Abdulrhman Ahmed received his Ph.D. in 2005 in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kassel in Germany and Dipl. Engineering in 1997 in Electrical Engineering from Kiev International University of Civil Aviation in Ukraine. He worked for Rohde & Schwarz for five years as a senior RF designer and eight years for NXP RF as a senior principal RF engineer. His current research work focuses on performance optimization of PA for Massive MIMO application and wideband digital Predistortion optimization. Dr. Ahmed has more than 25 US issued patents and more than 20 IEEE publications.