In the quest for higher data rates to support a variety of wireless services and different transmission schemes, system designers face higher circuit complexity but must meet similar budgets for size, power, and cost. Adding more transceiver channels in a base station tower yields higher throughput, but utilizing each channel at a higher RF power level is equally essential for keeping system complexity and cost at acceptable levels. For higher RF power, hardware designers do not have many alternatives in their RF front-end design but to rely on legacy solutions that need high bias power and complex peripheral circuits, which makes achieving design goals more difficult.
Analog Devices recently introduced an integrated high power switch with a low noise amplifier (LNA) in multichip modules for time division duplex (TDD) systems. The ADRF5545A/ADRF5547/ADRF5549 family covers cellular bands from 1.8 GHz to 5.3 GHz and it is optimally designed for M-MIMO antenna interfaces. Incorporating a high power switch in silicon process and a high performance low noise amplifier in GaAs process, this new family of devices offers high RF power handling capability together with high integration without any compromise—meaning it’s the best of both worlds…
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