RFMD® Introduces PowerSmart™ Power Platforms

23rd February 2010

ES Admin

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RF Micro Devices, Inc today introduced PowerSmart power platforms, a new product category designed to reshape the future of multimode, multi-band cellular RF architectures. RFMD's PowerSmart platforms feature a revolutionary new RF Configurable Power Core, which leverages industry-leading functional efficiency and delivers state-of-the-art processing of all known cellular communications modulation schemes, including GSM/GPRS, EDGE, EDGE Evolution, CDMA, 3G (TD-SCDMA or WCDMA/HSPA+) and 4G (LTE or WiMAX). With PowerSmart, RFMD is enabling a new generation of global smartphones and mobile nternet devices requiring three or more bands of 3G or 4G.

The RF Configurable Power Core at the heart of each PowerSmart platform incorporates all power amplification and RF power management functionality. RFMD's PowerSmart platforms also include all necessary switching and signal conditioning functionality in a compact reference design, providing smartphone manufacturers a single scalable source for the entire cellular front end. PowerSmart is modulation scheme agnostic and can support four bands of GSM/GPRS or EDGE and up to five bands of TD-SCDMA, WCDMA/HSPA+, LTE, WiMAX or CDMA all within a product footprint that is 35% smaller than today's highest volume quad-band solutions. In a real-world comparison, versus today's highest volume triple-band 3G solution using power amplifier duplexer (PAD) modules, PowerSmart reduces board space requirements by greater than 40%.

Eric Creviston, president of RFMD's Cellular Products Group (CPG), said, RFMD's PowerSmart™ power platforms deliver smartphone manufacturers enhanced performance and improvements in value and solution size that are unmatched in the cellular RF industry. PowerSmart™ platforms process all known cellular modulations at optimum performance, with superior energy efficiency and at the industry's lowest total cost of ownership. We anticipate significant customer adoption this year as PowerSmart™ enables global 3G/4G penta-band implementations with product footprints that are smaller than those of triple-band solutions. With pricing below competitive penta-band WCDMA solutions and a revolutionary architecture that enables both global platform manufacturing and real-time RF configurability of individual smartphone models, PowerSmart™ is indeed smart power for smartphones.

PowerSmart™ power platforms provide customers and cellular platform providers industry-leading mode coverage (GSM/GPRS, EDGE, EDGE Evolution, CDMA, TD-SCDMA, WCDMA/HSPA+ and LTE/4G) and industry-leading band coverage (bands 1-6 and 8-10). RFMD's PowerSmart™ platforms also help to extend battery life and significantly reduce average thermal dissipation both critical performance metrics for smartphone manufacturers by maximizing efficiency across power levels, across data rates (voice-only to LTE) and during non-ideal load conditions, also known as antenna mismatch. Each PowerSmart™ platform utilizes a standardized digital interface (SDI) and is optimized to mate with leading multi-band HSPA+/EDGE/GPRS RF transceivers.

RFMD offers the industry's broadest and most innovative portfolio of radio frequency components, including cellular power amplifier modules, cellular transmit modules, cellular switch and filter modules, and front ends for Wi-Fi, WiMAX and GPS applications. In addition to emerging multimode, multi-band architectures, RFMD's industry-leading 3G/4G product portfolio accommodates all major RF architectures, including mode-specific/band-specific and mode-specific/multi-band architectures. RFMD also supplies a broad portfolio of 2G/2.5G power amplifier-based and switch-based components optimized for 3G handsets, providing a comprehensive RF product portfolio covering the entire cellular front end.