Envelope tracking has come into force
Quantance's envelope tracking power supply delivers superb 4G/LTE Performance with off-the-shelf APT PAs and ET-optimised PAs
Quantance's flagship product, the Q845 qBoost ET power supply, has been successfully tested with a wide range of power amplifiers (PAs).
Based on customer reference design boards as well as in the labs of PA manufacturers, the company says its envelope tracking (ET) devices exhibited exceptional efficiency, linearity and noise performance with old and new PA technologies from all major PA providers.
These results suggest that the Q845 ET power supply can be paired with the PAs preferred by most 4G/LTE chipset providers and smartphone manufacturers (OEMs).
Chipset providers and device OEMs are depending on ET to address the increasing demands placed on 4G/LTE systems to improve transmit system efficiency, reduce current consumption and eliminate thermal problems.
At the same time, they are being pressured by band proliferation and platform cost and size reduction to move from single band PAs to multi-mode, multi-band (MMMB) PAs.
To ensure these demands are met today and into the future, qBoost operates with:
Off-the-shelf Average Power Tracking (APT) PAs that are in production today
Next gen PAs being optimised for ET, sampling now, and in production starting Q3 2013
MMMB and single band PAs in the most common bands (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,13,17,20,38,40,41)
The latest generation of 4G/LTE CMOS PAs
In addition, qBoost exhibits good performance at all LTE system bandwidths, from less than 1MHz to 20MHz, and all PA compatibility referenced above can be achieved while still meeting 3GPP receive band noise requirements.
"Our high-speed, boosting ET architecture is the only proven single-chip, production-ready solution that delivers industry leading ET efficiency and receive band noise performance for 4G/LTE up to 20MHz," says Vikas Vinayak, Quantance's CEO and co-founder.
"Many in the industry believe this level of performance requires unique PA characteristics, but that is incorrect. Our solution works with legacy PAs and next-generation ET-optimized PAs. We also look forward to proving our technology with emerging CMOS 4G/LTE PAs."
Quantance's patented qBoost ET technology is a boosting ET architecture that enables PA efficiency to reach theoretical limits, and at the same time, dramatically increases PA transmit power. The firm says its architecture delivers the response time equivalent of a 400MHz switcher for ET systems, while maintaining linearity and meeting receive band noise requirements.
This makes the Q845 more than 100 times faster, with lower noise, than any other mobile ET power supply solution available today. This ultra-fast performance, along with a standards-based interface and tiny application footprint, sets the industry standard for performance, size and integration simplicity.
Quantance, a venture-backed semiconductor startup based in Silicon Valley, was founded to build the industry's fastest power supplies.
