Efficient power amplifiers boost battery life

A new series of power amplifier modules promises the industry's best power-added efficiency for CDMA and GSM phones, allowing manufacturers to increase mobile phone battery life by as much as 15%.

Agilent Technologies has developed a new series of power amplifier (PA) modules for next-generation CDMA and GSM mobile handsets.

Agilent's new E-pHEMT (enhancement-mode pseudomorphic high-electron-mobility transistor) PA modules provide the industry's best power-added efficiency (PAE) for CDMA and GSM phones, and allow manufacturers to increase mobile phone battery life by as much as 15%, a critical feature in today's multifunction phones.

Agilent's E-pHEMT process provides the industry's best PAE, a measure of how much power it takes to amplify a signal for transmission to a basestation.

Higher PAE increases battery life, especially "talk time".

Agilent estimates that the E-pHEMT PA modules can increase talk time by as much as 30min on a single battery charge.

Agilent also has engineered the new devices to deliver industry-leading reliability, using a new passivation technique in the manufacturing process.

The process yields products that offer 100,000 years mean time to failure in continuous use at +90C.

Agilent has developed three E-pHEMT PA modules: two for CDMA/AMPS handsets and one for GSM.

Of the CDMA modules, the ACPM-7813 addresses the 800MHz dual-mode band, whereas the ACPM-7833 operates in the 1900MHz (PCS) range for handsets and wireless data terminal applications.

The ACPM-7891 PA module is targeted at triband GSM/GPRS phones.

The CDMA modules offer an industry-best PAE rating of 40%, with E-pHEMT technology that requires only a single positive power supply.

Higher efficiency also permits the use of smaller batteries to make room for additional features in handsets, data cards and PDAs, such as GPS emergency location, embedded camera modules and multi media services.

In addition, the PA provides extremely high signal quality, which is a function of the amplifier's linearity.

This is vital to CDMA because its complex signal transmission requires highly accurate signal reproduction.

Further, E-pHEMT has excellent low-voltage operation and is well positioned for next-generation 3G systems that may use lower battery voltages.

Agilent's GSM triband PA module also offers superior PAE of up to 60% in GSM band and 56% in both DCS and PCS bands.

The module is also capable of Class 12 operation for 2.5G applications such as GPRS service.

Agilent has already begun volume shipments of both CDMA and GSM modules to multiple customers.

To keep up with the demand for high-efficiency PA modules, FBAR filters and other E-pHEMT products, Agilent is quickly ramping its new state-of-the-art 6in wafer fab in Ft Collins, Colorado.

The fab offers high volume manufacturing capacity, and leverages state-of-the-art CMOS statistical process control techniques to optimise performance of advanced analogue/mixed-signal devices.

The Agilent ACPM-7813 CDMA PA module (4 x 4 x 1.1mm SMT package) operates over the 824 to 849MHz frequency range, and features +28.5dBm linear output power at 3.4V.

Specification-compliant linear operation can be realised from supply voltages between 3.2 and 4.2V, with minimal performance reduction at 3V.

The Agilent ACPM-7833 CDMA PA module (4 x 4 x 1.1mm SMT package) operates over the 1850 to 1910MHz PCS frequency range with +28.5dBm linear output power at 3.4V.

The Agilent ACPM-7891 GSM PA module (6 x 12 x 1.8mm SMT package) operates over the 900MHz EGSM, 1800MHz DCS and 1900MHz PCS frequency range.

The module features +35dBm linear output power at 2.2V in EGSM mode and +32.5dBm linear output power at 2.2V in DCS/PCS mode.

The PA operates from supply voltages between 3.0 and 5.3V, with minimal performance reduction at 2.7V.

The new Agilent PA modules are available now for sampling and ordering.

The company also intends to sample a high-PAE wideband CDMA PA module by mid-2003.

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