- Buyers Guide
GREENSBORO, N.C., June 18, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RF Micro Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq:RFMD), a global leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance semiconductor components, today announced the addition of five new distributed amplifiers for broadband, high-frequency applications. The new amplifiers deliver superior gain and output power (up to 35 GHz) and are designed to support a wide array of high frequency commercial, military and space applications.
Based upon GaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) technology, the SDA-1000 through 5000 series of distributed amplifiers range in operating frequency from DC-20 GHz to DC-35 GHz and represent the first RFMD amplifiers with operation above 20 GHz. Two follow-on high-performance amplifiers, to be introduced as an extension to this product family, will deliver similar wideband high-frequency performance and excellent noise figure and will increase operating frequency up to 50 GHz.
"We are pleased to introduce this new family of distributed amplifiers which have been designed specifically for high-frequency applications such as modulators, broadband test equipment, wideband gain blocks in military and space applications and Mach Zehnder Modulator (MZM) laser drivers and clock drivers in fiber optics. These new products deliver superior performance and provide a solid foundation for our broadband microwave amplifier product family," said Jeff Shealy, general manager of RFMD's Defense and Power business unit.
Additionally, Kevin Kobayashi, RFMD Fellow, stated, "We are also developing products with higher sensitivity, linearity and multi-Watt power output exploiting advanced semiconductors like Gallium Nitride and Indium Phosphide. Recently, we demonstrated as much as 4 times greater linearity and output power for GaN-based distributed amplifiers without compromising bandwidth or noise figure compared to our GaAs pHEMT products. These will be attractive solutions for emerging applications and systems such as software reconfigurable radios and 100 gigabit ethernet."
The GaN MMIC performance was presented by Kobayashi at the Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits symposium during the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium held June 6 through June 12.