New Industry Products

Ericsson Debuts New PKJ-N DC-DC Converter Family

May 23, 2005 by Jeff Shepard

Ericsson (Sweden) debuted its new PKJ-N dc-dc converter family, designed to provide high-quality, on-board power solutions in RF power amplifier systems and other distributed power applications, which offers high performance and reduced cost. The future proofed converter is DfE-compliant and RoHS-compliant and avoids re-qualification costs when soon-to-be-introduced legislation comes about. The converter's electrical design is specifically adapted to fulfill RF load requirements.

The PKJ-N converter is suitable for second-generation and third-generation radio base stations. The family presently consists of two products – the PKJ4216N (30.2 V/8.3 A/250 W) and the PKJ4316N (28.2 V/11 A/310 W). At 91.5% at half load and 91% at full load, the converters are efficient and offer a long system lifetime and reduced cost of energy consumption, reducing the total cost of ownership. The converters feature Ericsson Power Module's Metal-to-Metal technology, which offers improved thermal management and performance at a reduced cost.

The converters use an industry-standard, half-brick design with widely used pin-out configuration for simple integration into existing amplifier designs, and to provide secure sourcing. The fully featured converters include output over-voltage, input under-voltage, over-temperature and output short-circuit protection, together with soft-start, remote sense, remote control and output-voltage adjust functions. Keeping radiated EMI to a minimum, the PKJ4316N includes a ground plane in the PCB area under the dc-dc converter, which returns switching noise to ground as directly as possible, with improvements to both emissions and susceptibility.

With 1,500 Vdc input to output isolation, the converter meets isolation requirements equivalent to basic insulation according to IEC/EN/UL60950, and offering high reliability, the PKJ-N claims a predicted mean time between failure of three million hours. In OEM quantities of 1,000 pieces, the price is $61.50. The converters are designed according to mobile network RFPA requirements.