Balanced Low-Noise Amps Serve Cellular Infrastructure

A pair of GaAs balanced ultra-low noise amplifiers offers a slew of benefits, including high gain and high linearity, that combine to improve the sensitivity and dynamic range of cellular infrastructure applications. The models MGA-16516/17516 both feature a compact footprint and are designed to be used as first-stage LNAs. Typical applications include cellular base station transceiver radio cards, tower-mounted amplifiers, combiners, repeaters, and remote/digital radio heads. Both amplifiers are housed in a surface-mount 16-lead QFN package and were developed using the company’s 0.25-µm GaAs enhancement-mode pHEMT process. The MGA-16516 operates from 500 to 1700 MHz while the MGA-17516 operates from 1700 to 2700 MHz; the pair provides support for GSM, CDMA, UMTS and next-generation LTE cellular bandwidths. The MGA-16516/17516 have been designed to be used with 3-dB hybrid couplers at the input and output of LNAs typically found in the front end of cellular base stations, combiners and transceiver radio cards. In a typical operating environment of 5 V and 50 mA per channel, the MGA-16516 delivers a noise figure of 0.45 dB, gain of 17.5 dB, an input 3rd-order intercept point (IIP3) of 11.5 dBm, and 18 dBm of output power at the 1 dB compress point (P1dB) at 850 MHz. Under the same operating conditions, the MGA-17516 delivers enhanced performance of 0.52 dB noise figure, 17.2 dB gain, 13.7 dBm IIP3, and 21.5 dBm output power at P1dB at 1850 MHz. The MGA-16516/17516 balanced LNAs are available now with pricing starting from $3.22 each in lots of 10,000. AVAGO TECHNOLOGIES, San Jose, CA. (800) 235-0312.