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Nitronex is pleased to announce the introduction of a family of RF power transistors, based on its unique Sigantic tech, for the WiMax market
October 5, 2005
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Nitronex Corporation, a developer and manufacturer of high performance RF power transistors for the wireless infrastructure market, is pleased to announce the introduction of a family of RF power transistors, based on its unique SIGANTIC® (GaN on silicon) technology, for the WiMAX market. The products’ ability to simultaneously deliver high frequency, high power and broad bandwidth provides better performance than alternative technologies to current and future WiMAX infrastructure designers.
The family of WiMAX power transistors will initially consist of 10 and 50 Watt devices supporting both the 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz segments of the WiMAX market. Target customers are OEMS developing RF power amplifiers for fixed and mobile WiMAX infrastructure. The devices are designed to support broadband operation in these segments (2.3GHz to 2.7GHz and 3.3GHz to 3.8GHz) to allow greater design re-use and flexibility for OEMS. Devices for the 5.8GHz segment of the WiMAX market are planned for introduction in 2006.
“The release of these products marks an important milestone in the semiconductor industry. It is the first commercial introduction of a GaN based device grown on silicon for the wireless infrastructure market, and we are extremely proud of this first-of-its-kind accomplishment” said Chris Rauh, VP of Sales and Marketing for Nitronex. “We have leveraged our unique SIGANTIC® technology to produce a technically and commercially compelling GaN power transistor that brings real value to the developer. We believe the RF and reliability performance these devices deliver will greatly accelerate the industry adoption of GaN RF power devices.”
The NPT35050 (3.5GHz, 50W) is the first device in this product line to be released. It is designed for WiMAX power amplifier output stages. GaN’s higher power density enables the design of packaged devices with higher input and output impedances (20 ohms), eliminating the need for output matching, and making the device very easy for power amplifier developers to use. Using a typical single carrier OFDM (802.16d) waveform, the performance at Vds of 28 Volts and Idq of 1000 mA is 5 Watts of average output power with an EVM of 2%, efficiency of 18% and gain of 10 dB.
The RFHIC Company in Korea has been an early enthusiast of Nitronex’s technology. Mr. David Cho, CEO of RFHIC, said the company plans to use the NPT35050 in their upcoming line of high power modules aimed at the WiMAX, WiBro BTS and repeater power amplifier markets. Cho stated, “We need to deliver 10 Watts of average power under OFDM to meet our WiMax infrastructure customer’s latest needs. We believe GaN based RF power transistors from Nitronex are key to a number of markets for RFHIC.”
Nitronex is currently accepting pre-production orders for NPT35050 sample kits with first shipments in Q4 2005. Kits for the 2.5GHz devices and 10W 3.5GHz device are expected to be available for sampling in December 2005. All four parts are expected to be released to production in March 2006.
“We are very pleased with our progress over the past year in developing high performance products for the WiMAX market based on our unique SIGANTIC® technology,” commented Charles Shalvoy, CEO of Nitronex. “These WiMAX products combine the high performance of GaN with the low cost, large area availability of silicon. Consequently, we can use standard packaging, test, and assembly equipment, resulting in faster qualifications and lower costs.”
Nitronex Corp.
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