New Industry Products

RFaxis Unveils Advanced Envelope Tracker for CMOS Power Amplifiers

January 05, 2014 by Jeff Shepard

RFaxis, Inc. announced today that it has successfully developed one of the industry's most-advanced envelope trackers to significantly enhance the system-level efficiency of converged multi-mode multi-band (MMMB) power amplifiers that are finding increasing popularity in today's smartphone designs. The RFaxis envelope tracker (RFeT ) is a pure CMOS-based single-die envelope tracking modulator integrated into a family of converged multi-mode, multi-band (MMMB) power amplifiers (PA). It is engineered to support the latest class of cellular transceivers with envelope tracking algorithms and power management ICs (PMICs).

"As the cellular industry rapidly migrates from 3G to 4G/LTE networks to meet end users' insatiable demand for increased wireless data, the cost and efficiency of multi-mode multi-band PAs and associated RF front-ends are becoming major bottle necks," said Mike Neshat, chairman and CEO of RFaxis. "At RFaxis, we believe CMOS PAs and related technologies such as envelope tracking and antenna tuning hold the key to ultimate success of cost-effective 4G/LTE solutions.

“We are pleased to have completed the development of RFeT , our patent-pending envelope tracker. RFaxis’ RFeT is a disruptive technology as it eliminates the need for an external envelop tracking chip at the system level. This is truly another major milestone in RFaxis' journey to transform RF design in pure CMOS," Neshat concluded.

The RFeT has digital control that is compatible with the MIPI® (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) eTrak™ standard, and plays a critical role in enabling the RFaxis MMMB PA portfolio to achieve ultra-high efficiency (UHEFF™) and high linearity while offering broadband, scalable support of GSM, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, HSPA+, and LTE including other linear modulations such as CDMA, EVDO and TDSCDMA This eliminates the need of using exotic Envelope Tracking Power Supplies (ETPS) where standard dc-dc converters or direct battery connection would suffice to achieve the targeted efficiencies.