from: www.triquint.com


HILLSBORO, OR & SAN DIEGO, CA (USA) – November 17, 2008 – TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc (NASDAQ: TQNT), a leading RF front-end product manufacturer and foundry services provider, today announced the availability of a revolutionary new high power discrete RF transistor family for broadband applications including radar, signal jammers and wireless communications. TriQuint’s new PowerBand™ family was unveiled today at the MILCOM military communications conference and exhibition at the San Diego Convention Center (USA).

PowerBand™1 devices deliver high power performance across an exceptionally wide bandwidth while maintaining very high efficiency. Previous broadband market solutions traded-off performance to achieve relative wide-band service. TriQuint’s PowerBand™ innovation achieves unprecedented bandwidth coverage without sacrificing efficiency or other key performance parameters.

“PowerBand™ changes the wireless equation, creating an opportunity to save a tremendous amount of space, cost and energy. Because PowerBand™ efficiently delivers high power across unprecedented bandwidth, an RF design may require only one transistor line-up2 instead of several. This fact directly impacts the bill of materials and size of end user products by substantially reducing space dedicated to RF,” exclaimed TriQuint President and CEO Ralph Quinsey.

“The incredible performance of PowerBand™ is the first thing that evaluating engineers recognize as truly outstanding,” said Bill McCalpin, PowerBand™ Co-Inventor and General Manager, TriQuint Colorado Design Center. “A traditional high power RF transistor is designed to operate across a narrow frequency range, such as 2.53 - 2.65 GHz. Within that range it delivers power relatively efficiently. But as bandwidth increases, performance falls. PowerBand™ is totally different in its ability to deliver high power—up to 50Watts2—and high efficiency performance – 50 percent PAE, typical3 – across a much wider frequency range, from 500 MHz to 3 GHz.”

“PowerBand™ is disruptive technology, and as such there are sure to be some skeptics,” Mr. Quinsey acknowledged. “But the proof is here. We’ve achieved results that are reproducible and manufacturable.”

PowerBand™ devices have been reviewed by companies that require high power broadband RF transistors for their designs including Milpower, Inc., a California-based supplier of RF power systems for defense, military and aerospace contractors.

“PowerBand™ technology is a leap forward for wideband high power RF designs. The improved efficiency and bandwidth will pay system dividends in the form of less PCB area dedicated to RF, longer battery life, the opportunity to reshape end products and reduce size, as well as less need for thermal management,” said Dean Schulze, Senior Development Engineer, Milpower, Inc.

Many broadband defense and military programs could benefit from TriQuint’s new technology. In typical applications, one PowerBand™ transistor amplifier line-up2 (containing 2-4 devices) covering an entire band could replace three or more traditional transistor amplifier line-ups (containing 2-4 devices). In a typical application, 2-4 PowerBand™ devices could replace between 6 and 12 conventional RF transistors.



PowerBand™ enables greater efficiency for mobile as well as ground-based RF networks infrastructure applications. In the case of mobile devices, greater efficiency can extend battery life and reduce system over-heating. Efficiency in ground-based systems translates into less waste heat, which can reduce power costs and carbon footprints associated with heat removal while also reducing the amount of equipment dedicated to thermal management. For both mobile and ground-based RF systems, PowerBand™ can reduce BOMs, speed assembly and shrink inventory overhead.

PowerBand™ technology is also incredibly flexible, meaning that it can be applied to most common semiconductor processes that manufacturers use to create RF transistors. PowerBand™ devices can be developed using gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium nitride (GaN), as well as RF LDMOS (laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor) technologies.

“The applications of this technology are vast,” said Mr. McCalpin. “We encourage anyone who has an interest in the benefits of PowerBand™ technology to talk with us about their application requirements. This innovation can enable new usage models and cost points for a broad range of wireless products.”

PowerBand™ devices are on display at MILCOM at the San Diego Convention Center November 17-19. Prototypes and evaluation boards are now available; product delivery is scheduled for the second quarter of 2009. TriQuint’s first family of PowerBand™ devices offer output power from 10-50 Watts; operating voltages range from 12-28V and operational frequency ranges from 500 MHz to 3 GHz.

Richard: 确实是个好东西。但是有几点不明白：1.是不是内匹配？2.宽带性能是由匹配网络得到的，还是半导体结构？3.这个技术貌似是与工艺无关的，LDMOS，GaAs pHEMT，GaN HEMT等等都可以应用，那么他主要是做什么文章呢？PA设计的几个要素：带宽、增益、功率、效率、线性度、稳定性，甚至体积等等，往往都需要巧妙的tradeoff，TriQuint的PowerBand起码已经同时解决了这些当中的几个，所以不得不赞。

这几天突然想起来一个问题：很多内匹配到50欧姆的PA，实际在应用中和他相连的别的元件，比如天线，如果偏离50欧姆怎么办，哪怕是仅仅偏离一点点？做PA的匹配网络的时候肯定得考虑这个问题，如果外部阻抗变化1%（或者其他更合理的值） 就导致PA内部Transistor的负载和源阻抗变化很多，从而偏离其最佳工作点，这应该也是合理的推断吧？那么应该如何考虑解决这个问题呢？