Gallium nitride (GaN) RF power transistor developer Nitronex and Bath, UK based Nujira are jointly developing a power amplifier reference design for WiMAX basestations. Combining GaN devices with Nujira’s high accuracy tracking (HAT) technology, the partners have obtained 45% efficiency.

In fact, using a 4-channel WCDMA waveform with conventional digital pre-distortion (DPD) techniques, the companies have been able to realize over 44 dBm of linear power with 45% efficiency and high linearity. According to the partners, these results were achieved using production ready devices from both companies. Furthermore, Nitronex said that the same solution demonstrated its flexibility by achieving 43.2 dBm of linear power with 43% efficiency under a demanding WiMAX waveform with 20 MHz video bandwidth and 8.2 dB PAR.

"Nitronex believes that GaN devices will most clearly establish their value when combined with advanced power amplifier techniques such as Nujira's HAT technology," said Chris Rauh, vice president of marketing and sales at Nitronex. "We are especially excited that the results come from production ready technology from both companies which greatly increases our customers' confidence in adopting this approach."

Nujira’s vice president of strategy & marketing Julian Hildersley added, "Nujira HAT envelope tracking technology can greatly enhance the efficiency of power amplifiers, allowing the creation of modules that deliver both high energy efficiency over a broad frequency spectrum and flexibility. The same power modulator module can equally well be applied to WiMAX, WCDMA or even DVB and other transmission. Our reference design work with Nitronex very effectively demonstrates how well our technology works in a real circuit."

Nitronex said that samples of the NPT25100, simulation models and standard evaluation boards are available immediatel. However, samples of the amplifier pallet optimized for high accuracy tracking integrated with Nujira's power modulator to enable designers develop amplifiers using their own DPD techniques will be available in the third quarter..

www.nitronex.com
www.nujira.com

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