GaN Is Starting to Drive RF Power Semiconductors for Wireless Infrastructure

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1Q 2017 | IN-4490

RF power semicondutors for wireless infrastructure had an essentially flat year in 2016, as it was down slightly overall from 2015 due to delays and economic issues. The prognosis for the future is also a bit ho-hum, with incremental decline starting in the middle of the current 5-year forecast cycle as worldwide infrastructure finally gets built out.

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Where We Are Now

NEWS


RF power semicondutors for wireless infrastructure had an essentially flat year in 2016, as it was down slightly overall from 2015 due to delays and economic issues. The prognosis for the future is also a bit ho-hum, with incremental decline starting in the middle of the current 5-year forecast cycle as worldwide infrastructure finally gets built out.

The device forecast is obviously tracking what is occurring in the basestation hardware business, although there are device technology mix shifts that are important as gallium nitride (GaN) gains share driven by shifts in basestation topology to more compact architectures.

GaN's Impressive Surge

IMPACT


This market has been dominated for the last two decades by silicon LDMOS, which represents a reasonably good trade-off between cost and performance. This past year has seen some dramatic change in the technology mix, and in 2015, GaN had slightly above a 10% share of the overall wireless infrastructure RF power device market.

For 2016, the share has surged to nearly 20% and is expected to rise to nearly 40% revenue share by 2022. In fact, this may be conservative depending on how the wireless infrastructure market actually rolls out. It is important to remember that GaN offers the high-power performance of LDMOS with the high-frequency performance of gallium arsenide (GaAs).

Why and How This Is Happening

COMMENTARY


There are several reasons why GaN RF power devices have finally gained so much traction. GaN has been around for many years and has struggled to break out of the single digits from a technology share standpoint.

Initially, cost was the biggest driver; most GaN devices are built on a SiC substrate, but this material is expensive and the wafer size is small compared to silicon. Constant improvement in the manufacturing process has helped drive down the $/W point for GaN. Despite some success in the military markets that are not quite as cost sensitive, the wireless infrastructure RF power device market has always been the big prize with its US$1 billion TAM.

Second, the topology of wireless infrastructure networks themselves has contributed to GaN’s recent rise. Basestations are now more distributed in nature with the RF sections being mounted closer to the antenna (remote radio heads) or actually in the antenna itself (integrated antennas). These changes generally require smaller power amplifiers, as cabling and passive losses are lower. A typical GaN RF power amplifier for a remote radio head can be in the 20W to 60W range.

If one looks at the total wireless infrastructure watts in play today, the number is actually higher with the new lower power topologies as compared to the historical high-power macro basestation. There are simply more basestations being built.

GaN devices have a much higher power density, therefore, a smaller GaN die can produce similar power when compared to a silicon LDMOS die. At lower power levels packaging becomes less of a cost issue and in fact a package for a GaN device can be the same as for a LDMOS part. This means that a 20W to 60W GaN device is closer in cost to an equivalent silicon LDMOs device, thus negating some of silicon LDMOS’s previous advantage. There are incremental performance improvements, as well, with higher efficiency and  spectral performance being somewhat better for the newer technology.

Look for GaN RF power devices for wireless infrastructure to continue to move forward in terms of share, shipments, and revenue. For those vendors with a GaN program in place, they should be well-positioned for the future. Those vendors without GaN capability will need to get on board or perhaps form partnerships with existing GaN suppliers.

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