Industry Expert Blogs

Using GF’s 45RFSOI technology, UCSD Prof. Peter Asbeck recently developed a power amplifier operating at 28 GHz with output power of 22dBm and more than 40 percent power-added efficiency (PAE). When backed off for the 64QAM OFDM signals used in 5G, the amplifier achieves an average output power of 13 dBm at 10 dB backoff, with 17 percent PAE, even without digital predistortion.“This is the right level of power and efficiency for the majority of the 5G 28 GHz applications,” Asbeck said.

Power amplifiers (PAs) are a different breed of cat from most other chips, and the PAs needed for the 5G wireless solutions are likely to be much different than those used in today’s 4G smart phones and base stations. Most 5G wireless applications will use phased array antennas to focus and steer multiple beams, and it is this ability to divide the transmission task among multiple beams, which gives 5G the ability to achieve what, to many, seem improbable performance targets.

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