Nujira offers low-power 4G RF reference design

LONDON – Nujira Ltd. (Cambridge, England), a specialist in power amplifiers (PAs) for mobile communications and a pioneer of envelope tracking (ET) technology, has released a 16-band RF front-end reference design for global LTE handsets called Woodstock.

The reference design makes use of Nujira's NCT-L1200 chip to implement envelope tracking, a technique that saves power compared with conventional constant supply voltage PAs by dynamically adjusting the supply voltage to the PA to maximize the energy efficiency over the whole modulation cycle.

The reference design specifically addresses energy efficiency and frequency band challenges that have surfaced since the introduction of 4G communications, the company said. The Woodstock board covers up to 16 bands at frequencies from 700-MHz to 2.7-GHz in a PCB area of less than 200 square millimetres and supports 2G, 3G and 4G communications.

In contrast, with a discrete design approach, up to nine variants of some popular smartphone models are required to cover all regions and operators, for LTE alone.


Click on image to enlarge.
Woodstock reference design block diagram. Source: Nujira.

The Woodstock reference design incorporates three PAs; a multi-mode, multi-band ET PA, a broadband 2.3- to 2.7-GHz ET PA, and an additional region- or operator-specific LTE ET PA. It also contains 10 duplex filters for time division duplex bands and appropriate RF antenna switches.

"Nujira is the only ET vendor with the ability to support our customers with these complex, leading-edge RF reference designs," said Tim Haynes, CEO of Nujira, in a statement.


Related links and articles:

www.nujira.com

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