Barcelona. Peregrine Semiconductor Corp. is teaming with parent company Murata to announce the 2015 UltraCMOS Global 1 Initiative. The campaign launches with the UltraCMOS Global 1 PE56500 product demo at Mobile World Congress 2015. This new initiative seamlessly integrates the PE56500 all-CMOS RF front-end solution and Murata filters.
“Last year at Mobile World Congress, Peregrine announced the industry’s first reconfigurable RF front-end system, UltraCMOS Global 1, and proved that a CMOS power amplifier (PA) could compete with GaAs (gallium arsenide) technology,” said Jim Cable, president and CEO of Peregrine Semiconductor. “Peregrine’s recent acquisition by our long-time partner Murata facilitates the 2015 UltraCMOS Global 1 Initiative and speeds the industry’s transition to an integrated, all-CMOS RF front end.”
“Over our 70-year history, Murata has established a reputation as a leading filter and RF module provider. Today, Murata holds over 45% of the world’s surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter market and over 60% of the connectivity module market,” said Norio Nakajima, executive vice president and director of the Communication Business Unit of Murata. “By combining Peregrine’s Global 1 solution with Murata’s industry-leading filters and module capabilities, we can offer the first completely integrated RF front-end solution from a single company.”
UltraCMOS Global 1 technology makes a single, global SKU possible—saving 4G LTE mobile-device manufacturers time and money. With this new collaboration between Murata and Peregrine, every component required for one SKU would be available from a single company. This UltraCMOS Global 1 Initiative will accelerate LTE mobile-device manufacturers’ transition to reconfigurable RFFE designs, which accommodate the world’s 40-plus LTE bands on a single chip.
Global 1 offers the entire wireless ecosystem ease of tunability for LTE device manufacturers. Before Global 1, RF engineers would have to manually solder and tune the RF front end through a process known as discrete duplexer matching. This manual process could take anywhere from two weeks to one month—time that delayed the device’s introduction into the market. Global 1 replaces discrete duplexer matching with a sophisticated tunable matching network that optimizes the PA match across the band. With Global 1 and its supporting software, an engineer can simply plug in the device and use the software to tune the RF front end within a few hours. Additionally, the device remains reconfigurable and can be tuned to another frequency or band to meet market demand. This capability is being demonstrated at Mobile World Congress 2015.
The UltraCMOS Global 1 PE56500 is a fully integrated, reconfigurable 3G/4G cellular RF front-end (RFFE) solution that includes a multimode, multiband (MMMB) PA, PA tuning, post-PA switch, and antenna switch in a single package. It has three monolithic MMMB linear PAs divided into low, mid, and high band paths that cover 690 to 915 MHz, 1,710 to 2,100 MHz, and 2,300 to 2,700 MHz, respectively. Each of the three paths contain a tunable inter-stage and a final tunable matching network to optimize the performance of the multi-mode PA to the operating cellular band.
The PE56500 is configured through a MIPI RFFE v1.1 compliant digital interface. This enables tunable matching and bias optimization for optimal linearity and efficiency tradeoff. The configurable RF and bias minimize phone variations due to mode, frequency and production tolerances.
The all-CMOS RF front-end solution provides easy-to-use digitally controlled adaptation across modes and bands, high isolation to solve interoperability issues, and scalability to easily support higher band counts with low-loss switching and tunability. Built on Peregrine’s UltraCMOS 10 technology, the PE56500 combines Peregrine’s proven RF-SOI switch and tuner technology with new CMOS PA capability that delivers raw performance equivalent to GaAs.
The Global 1 PE56500 will be in volume production in late 2015.
