Guerrilla RF (OTCMKTS:GUER): Power Amplifiers GRF5526/36 Designed Can Deliver ¼ W of Linear Power for 5G sans DPD
About The Company
Guerilla RF (OTCMKTS: GUER) (founded in 2013) is based in Greenboro, NC, and is involved in the development and manufacture of high-performance monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) for wireless OEMs. These include 4G macro and small cell base stations, cellular repeaters/DAS, automotive telematics such as SDARS/V2X/GPS/DAB, mission-critical military communications, navigation, and high-fidelity wireless audio. Over the years, the company has built up an extensive portfolio of more than 100 high-performance radio frequency (RF) and microwave semiconductor devices. The current product line has ultra-low noise amplifiers, gain blocks, driver amplifiers, mixers, RF switches, and linear PAs (power amplifiers).
GRF5526/36 PAs Deliver ¼ W of Linear Power for 5G without DPD
Guerrilla RF, Inc. has made an announcement about sampling the GRF5526 and GRF5536, the latest in a series of new ¼ W linear power amplifiers being released by the company. These are InGaP HBT amplifiers, designed for 5G wireless infrastructure applications that need exceptional native linearity over large 100MHz bandwidths and temperature extremes of -40°C to 85°C. The GRF5526 and GRF5536 are available in pin-compatible 3mm x 3mm, 16-pin QFN packages.
The GRF5526 and GRF5536, spanning frequency ranges of 2.5–2.7GHz and 3.3-4.2GHz respectively, are tuned to operate within the n7, n30, n38, n40, n41, n48, n53, n77, n88, and n90 5G new radio (NR) bands. They usually deliver 23dBm of linear power over the entire -40°C to 85°C temperature range while maintaining ACLR levels of better than -45dBc, IMD3 levels < -20dBm, EVM levels < 1.5%, and PAE Efficiencies in the 14% range – all without the aid of supplemental linearization schemes like digital pre-distortion (DPD).
The ability to overcome the 45dBc ACLR performance metric without DPD is very important when it comes to cellular applications like home and commercial repeaters/boosters, femtocells, and picocells, and also cable loss compensators which are used in conjunction with automotive “shark fin” antennas. The sensitivity to cost, power, and size constraints, prevents the use of elaborate linearization techniques like DPD. That is why; designers have to make use of the power amplifier’s native linearity to meet the stringent emissions mask requirements imposed by the latest 5G standards.
Key Quote
“With the addition of the GRF5526 and GRF5536, GRF has now completely filled out its portfolio of ¼ W PAs for cellular applications,” says Ryan Pratt, CEO, and founder of Guerrilla RF. “The entire family of InGaP HBT PAs has proven to be extremely popular with our cellular repeater and automotive customers, and we expect these latest additions to be key enablers as our customers update their designs to accommodate for the newest 5G frequency bands.”
