RFaxis reveals world's first pure CMOS 2.4GHz WLAN PA
RFaxis, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, has begun mass production of the RFX240 high-power 2.4GHz PA for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications.
The RFX240 is the first of RFaxis' pure CMOS high-power CMOS PA series targeting the rapidly growing wireless access point (AP), Router, Set Top Box (STB), home gateway, hot spot and other wireless infrastructure markets.
The RFX240 is pin-to-pin compatible with incumbent solutions available in today's market, including Skyworks SE2576L, SE2604L and SE2605L, which are all based on significantly more expensive compound semiconductor processes.
"We are excited to bring to the Wi-Fi market yet another major technology breakthrough," says Mike Neshat, chairman and CEO of RFaxis. "Up until now, the high-power Wi-Fi market has been served exclusively by costly Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) and Silicon Germanium (SiGe) PAs."
He adds, "With the introduction of our RFX240, we have proven to the RF industry once again that pure CMOS does deliver. In fact, the RFX240 not only delivers the same gain, output power level and excellent linearity, but also outperforms competitors in power added efficiency, yet another key figure-of-merit for a power amplifier. After extensive evaluation, the feedback from our tier-1 ODM and OEM customers has been exceedingly positive. RFaxis, as well as customers, are eager to start volume shipment of the RFX240 this summer."
The RFX240 is a high power, high linearity power amplifier built on industry-standard bulk CMOS, the lowest-cost semiconductor process ever to implement an RF device. The RFX240 is optimised to provide the functionality of transmit power amplification for IEEE 802.11b/g/n applications in the 2.4GHz frequency range.
It provides 30dB power gain, 26dBm linear output power for OFDM/64QAM with 5V power supply and consumes 30mA less current than competition PAs of the same category. It integrates full-CMOS logic control, on-chip input and inter-stage impedance matching, RF decoupling, as well as a truly directional coupler based power detector for accurate closed-loop power control.
The RFX240 is assembled in a compact 3.0 x 3.0 x 0.55mm 16-pin Quad Flat No-Lead (QFN) package. Samples are now available.
