New Guerrilla RF power amplifier delivers the ultimate in native linearity

Guerrilla RF has unveiled the GRF5507, one of 10 new ¼ W linear power amplifiers being released over the next two quarters as part of the company’s expansion into the cellular market. These new indium gallium phosphide heterojunction bipolar transistor amplifiers were designed specifically for 5G/4G wireless infrastructure applications requiring exceptional native linearity over temperature extremes of -40° C to 85° C.

Spanning a frequency range of 700 to 800 MHz, the GRF5507 variant is tuned to operate within the n12, n14, n28 and n29 5G new radio (NR) bands. The device can deliver over 24 dBm of linear power over the entire -40° C to 85° C temperature range while maintaining adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) levels of better Source: Guerrilla RFthan -45 dBc, third-order intermodulation distortion levels less than -20 dBm, error vector magnitude levels less than 1% and power added efficiencies greater than 15% — all without the aid of supplemental linearization schemes like digital pre-distortion (DPD).

The ability to beat the -45 dBc ACLR performance metric without DPD is critical for cellular applications like home and commercial repeaters/boosters, femtocells, picocells and cable loss compensators associated with automotive ‘shark fin’ antennas. In each of these use cases, the sensitivity to cost, power and size constraints prohibits the use of elaborate linearization techniques like DPD. Instead, designers must rely on the power amplifier’s native linearity to meet the stringent emissions mask requirements imposed by the latest 5G and 4G standards.

During the development of the GRF55xx series, Guerrilla RF consulted directly with its base of customers to ensure the devices delivered the best blend of power and linearity, thus maximizing the effective range and throughput for their cellular systems. Guerrilla RF also designed the entire family of devices to be fully footprint compatible, enabling its customer base to rapidly customize their designs for a myriad of cellular frequencies.

The GRF55xx family comes in pin-compatible 3 mm x 3 mm, 16-pin QFN packages. As noted above, the common footprint enables a single design to address multiple bands via simple component swaps.

Samples and evaluation boards are available now for the GRF5507. Prices start at $1.55.