Fabless semiconductor firm RFaxis Inc of Irvine, CA, USA, which designs RF semiconductors and embedded antenna solutions for the wireless connectivity and cellular mobility markets, has begun mass production of its RFX240 high-power 2.4GHz power amplifier (PA) for wireless local area network (WLAN) applications.
RFX240 is the first of RFaxis' pure CMOS high-power CMOS PA series targeting the 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, including Skyworks' SE2576L, SE2604L and SE2605L, which are all based on compound semiconductor processes.
"We are excited to bring to the Wi-Fi market yet another major technology breakthrough," says RFaxis' chairman & CEO Mike Neshat. "Up until now, the high-power Wi-Fi market has been served exclusively by costly gallium arsenide (GaAs) and silicon germanium (SiGe) PAs. 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."
RFX240 is a high power, high linearity PA built on industry-standard bulk CMOS, the lowest-cost semiconductor process ever to implement an RF device, says the firm. The RFX240 is optimized 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 3.0mm x3.0mm x 0.55mm 16-pin quad flat no-lead (QFN) package.
