Mobile Experts released its annual forecast on Semiconductors for RRH. The 2016 release shows that weak demand for LTE base stations has impacted the RF semiconductor market, but losses are partially offset by wider bandwidth and MIMO requirements, which drive higher prices.

The five-year forecast for RRH semiconductors includes explanatory block diagrams and breakdowns of revenue, pricing, shipment, and market share analysis. Multiple semiconductor products are analyzed thoroughly, including ASICs, FPGAs, SoCs, LDMOS, GaN, ADCs, DACs, PLLs, OCXOs, AQMs, and others.

The report further explains that the integration of data converters and processors is a new trend in the radio head market, greatly reducing power consumption as the market leads into Massive MIMO and 5G architectures.

"The LTE market has peaked," explained Joe Madden, Principal Analyst at Mobile Experts. "Remote radio head shipments are declining in the biggest networks, and the requirements are starting to change as the market turns to smaller networks. Multiple bands are now covered in one RRH, and new requirements like 4x4 MIMO and other variations will start to impact the semiconductor architecture. For example, new kinds of integration are starting to appear to reduce power consumption and cost of the transceiver."

Further, the report explains how GaN power transistors are performing very well in wideband and high frequency base stations. According to Mobile Experts, GaN has stolen major market share from LDMOS over the past two years, and new requirements could play into additional GaN design wins.

"This report explains everything from FPGAs and ASICS to SoCs, DPD, ADCs, DACs, PLLs, OCXOs, and AQMs. If you know what those acronyms mean, this report is for you. We break down each of these components, to illustrate what vendors need to develop next," continued Principal Analyst Joe Madden.

The Semiconductors for RRH report includes 65 pages of analysis and includes more than 40 diagrams and charts to illustrate the technical trends in the semiconductor market. ASICs, FPGAs, SoCs, LDMOS, GaN, ADCs, DACs, PLLs, OCXOs, AQMs, and more are broken down and analyzed for shipments, pricing, and market shares.

Existing Mobile Experts macro subscribers also receive related Expert Insight analysis, with quarterly strategic conclusions that offer crucial insight into evolution of the market from LTE to 5G. These strategic-level documents highlight topics such as key technology advances, manufacturing capacity, and mergers/acquisitions to keep subscribers in touch with what's really important in the market.

Company Profiles Include:

Alcatel-Lucent, Altera, Altiostar, Ampleon, Analog Devices, Broadcom (Avago), CREE/Wolfspeed, E-ASIC, Ericsson, Freescale ,Fujitsu ,HiSilicon ,Hittite Microwave/ADI, Huawei Technologies, Infineon, Intel, Lattice Semiconductor, Linear Technology, Maxim Integrated Products, Maxlinear, MuRata, NEC, Nokia, NXP Semiconductor, PMC-Sierra/Microsemi, Qorvo, RFHIC, Skyworks Solutions, Texas Instruments and Xilinx.