As global wireless data traffic exponentially grows at an annual rate of more than 25 percent, service providers will require mmWave bands to support the emerging “Mobility without Boundaries” trend. While mmWave 5G offers immense potential in terms of bandwidth, user capacity and quality of service, developing a commercially realizable mmWave ecosystem has multiple challenges for cellular service providers. These challenges include CAPEX and OPEX costs, quality of service, along with availability and scalability to surgically address available markets. Using many of the mmWave 5G radio and customer premises equipment (CPE) solutions in the market today, business case does not always close, leading many to believe it is not the right solution to satisfy the immense demand for data. With its Gen 4 IC technology, Anokiwave is changing that perception.
To address the gap in performance at mmWave, Anokiwave recently released its fourth generation of mmWave 5G silicon beamformer ICs (BFICs). The AWMF-0221 and the AWMF-0236 set the benchmark for the industry’s highest PAE and linear output power silicon ICs across all 5G bands. As shown in Figure 1, each IC offers a scalable 4 × 2 quad-channel architecture with dual polarization and independent gain and phase control for each channel.
Figure 1 BFIC block diagram.
Building upon multiple generations of released and field-deployed mmWave silicon IC solutions, the new generation of ICs set the groundwork to make mmWave 5G a commercial and technical reality at a mass scale. Anokiwave’s AWMF-0221 and AWMF-0236 products redefine innovation and provide an unmatched combination of performance, functions, features and commercial benefits to enable the 5G use case:
Wideband performance: Both ICs provide ±0.5 dB gain flatness across the entire band.
- AWMF-0221: 24.5 to 29.5 GHz covering n258, n261 and n257
- AWMF-0236: 37 to 43.5 GHz covering n260 and n259.
Both ICs work over the entire frequency band without additional tuning or front-end matching. This performance enables OEMs to develop a single radio board to serve multiple operators, minimizing the number of radio SKUs.
Industry’s highest PAE percentage and linear output power beamformers: Anokiwave continues to push the limit of output power and PAE in silicon ICs. The combination of linear output power and efficiency reduces the total radio size, the number of silicon ICs needed to achieve the intended performance and the overall DC power consumption of the radio. At a system level and compared to other 5G mmWave solutions, the new ICs enable:
- >4X more area covered per cell site
- >3X additional users for a given data rate
- >70% lower cost by increased radio coverage area
Lowest noise figure: Low noise figure in silicon, especially in mmWave frequencies, is challenging. These BFICs offer the industry’s lowest coherent noise figure, providing OEMs with up to 10 dB better EIS in the infrastructure, without increasing antenna size. This allows operators to increase the coverage area and the number of subscribers with the same number of sites.
Automatic temperature compensation: In addition to the RF functionality, AWMF-0221 and AWMF-0236 feature a uniquely implemented and digitally controlled fully automatic temperature compensation (ATC) function. This built-in ATC ensures stable performance across the entire temperature range with no user input required. The ATC performance has been proven across the entire mmWave signal chain and in radios, providing exceptionally flat gain, error vector magnitude (EVM) and adjacent leakage power ratio performance. Figure 2 shows the overall signal chain performance of the AWMF-0221, IF up-/down-converters and an LO synthesizer maintaining ± 0.5 dB gain flatness across the entire temperature and frequency range, without user feedback.
Figure 2 Tx signal chain performance.
Figure 3 Measured results showing sidelobe level improvement with Zero-Cal®.
Ready to support future needs: The new ICs are designed to support mmWave 5G NR and other private wireless network requirements well beyond today’s needs. The ICs have been in production arrays meeting or exceeding performance and cost goals supporting 1 percent EVM performance, instantaneous bandwidth up to 1.4 GHz and higher order modulation schemes up to 1024-QAM. These ICs are versatile and scalable enough to address 5G use cases like gNodeB macro base stations, small cells, integrated access and backhaul nodes and CPEs. Complete with future-ready RF performance, these ICs target current and future applications in the 5G ecosystem.
Zero-Cal®: All Anokiwave beamformers feature the patented Zero-Cal® feature that ensures every IC has the same channel-to-channel and IC-to-IC performance. This eliminates the need for array-level calibration to account for IC-level inconsistencies. This feature is commonly used in field-deployed radios and is proven over large production volumes. Figure 3 shows a mmWave 5G antenna array measurement with and without Zero-Cal® enabled. Enabling Zero-Cal® allows the array to achieve near-ideal performance without additional calibrations. Users enabling Zero-Cal® in production see up to 30 percent line yield improvement with this feature.
Proven antenna performance: Anokiwave prides itself on providing ICs that successfully work in mmWave active antennas that are used in volume in field-deployed radios. Anokiwave BFICs are designed to perform at an antenna level, as evidenced by multiple antennas in both the 24/26/28 GHz and the 37/39 GHz frequency ranges that Anokiwave and its customers have successfully developed, FCC certified and deployed into the field. Figure 4 shows antenna patterns at 39 GHz.
Figure 4 Measured antenna patterns with Anokiwave BFICs.
These results are revolutionizing the market, making mmWave 5G technically viable as well as commercially viable at scale. The excitement around the mmWave market emergence is something we see infrequently in our careers. Anokiwave saw this change coming years ago and with continued year-over-year innovations, we have enabled each phase of this new technology. Now, with these latest beamformer ICs, they have truly taken the mmWave 5G business case discussion from a typical small-scale deployment to an accessible technology for mass-scale deployment that closes the mmWave 5G business case.
Anokiwave
San Diego, Calif.
www.anokiwave.com