MACOM's new RF Energy Toolkit, now available in Beta, helps system designers simplify and accelerate product development cycles by making it easier to fine-tune RF output levels to maximize efficiency and performance. Combining the benefits of MACOM's GaN-on-Si power transistors with intuitive and flexible software and signal control features, the MACOM RF Energy Toolkit removes guesswork from RF power supply design and enables faster time to market.
The MACOM GaN-on-Si power transistors supplied with the RF Energy Toolkit offer up to 10% higher power efficiency than comparable LDMOS-based transistors. This is a significant benefit for continuous-wave RF power applications, where every increase in power efficiency translates to lower energy consumption and reduced operating costs during sustained use. System designers can select from a range of MACOM power transistors to meet power level requirements from 30W to 1000W, and the toolkit supports coherent channel operation, allowing for easy combination of multiple RF power channels, such as 3 x 300W or 2 x 500W. Supported frequency bands range from 915MHz to 2.45GHz.
“Commercial equipment manufacturers are eager to capitalize on the huge market opportunity for high-performance GaN-on-Si enabled RF power systems, but they are reluctant to invest the resources to design the RF power elements themselves,” says Mark Murphy, Senior Director of RF Power at MACOM. “The RF Energy Toolkit lifts this design burden from OEMs and helps them bring their RF power-based systems to market faster by providing an affordable, easy-to-use platform that simplifies system design and reduces development costs.”.
“The current RF Energy toolkit offers the industry a first in several ways: The kit is an easy-to-use, compact, and highly flexible controller that can operate independently based on hardware-based reflection coefficient optimization,” says Klaus Werner, Managing Director of pinkRF, a MACOM design partner. “Alternatively, the kit can execute complex tasks alone or in conjunction with other controllers, programmed remotely or embedded with any number of RF vectors (power, phase, frequency, time, energy) to control complex processes or variables. The tool connects to the power amplifier; no special integration is required. I see it as an RF power engineer’s ‘Swiss Army knife’ for mastering, optimizing, and industrializing RF power applications and their associated controllers.”.
Beta version RF power toolkits are available to qualified customers now, with wider availability planned for fall 2017.
