Power amplifiers maintain native linearity despite temperature extremes
As part of its expansion into the cellular market, Guerrilla RF has released its latest InGaP HBT power amplifiers. The GRF5508 and GRF5510 are two of 10 0.25W linear power amplifiers being released. The InGaP HBT amplifiers were designed specifically for 5G/4G wireless infrastructure applications requiring exceptional native linearity over temperature extremes of -40 to 85 degrees C.
Spanning frequency ranges of 800 to 900MHz (GRF5508) and 880 to 960MHz (GRF5510), the InGaP HBT are tuned to operate within the n5, n8, n18, n20 and n26 5G new radio (NR) bands. They can deliver 24dBm of linear power over the entire temperature range while maintaining adjacent channel leakage ration (ACLR) levels of better than -45dBc, IMD3 levels of less than -17dBm, EVM levels of less than one per cent and PAE efficiencies above 14 per cent. This is all achieved without the aid of supplemental linearisation schemes like digital pre-distortion (DPD), adds the company.
The ability to beat the -45dBc ACLR performance metric without DPD is critical for cellular applications like home and commercial repeaters/boosters, femto cells, pico cells and cable loss compensators associated with automotive, so called shark fin antennae. In each of these use cases, the sensitivity to cost, power and size constraints prohibits the use of elaborate linearisation techniques like DPD. Designers rely on the power amplifier’s native linearity to meet the stringent emissions mask requirements imposed by the latest 5G and 4G standards.
The GRF55xx series was developed to blend power and linearity to maximise range and throughput for customers’ cellular systems. The family was also designed to be footprint-compatible, so that designs can be customised for many cellular frequencies.
The GRF55xx family comes in pin-compatible 3.0 x 3.0mm, 16-pin QFN packages. The footprint enables a single design to address multiple bands via simple component swaps.
Samples and evaluation boards are available now for the GRF5508 and GRF5510.