GaN RF Power Semiconductor Devices Continue to Gain Share

The Gallium Nitride (GaN) versus Silicon Laterally Diffused Metal Oxide Semiconductor (Si-LDMOS) competitive story is not a new one, but over the last year or so GaN has become much more competitive. When looked at from a $/Watt standpoint, Si-LDMOS Radio Frequency (RF) power devices have become somewhat asymptotic and any profound price reductions are difficult to see for the future. GaN, on the other hand, has been descending to around US$0.20 to US$0.25/watt. While this range is still higher than that of Si-LDMOS, the difference is now close enough that GaN is starting to gain share.

Simplistically, this assumes technical performance parity, but in some cases there are incremental improvements in performance for GaN primarily associated with linearity, efficiency, and high-voltage operation. Si-LDMOS also has an upper frequency limit of about 4 Ghz, while GaN is useable well up into the millimeter wave region (>20 Ghz).

GaN RF power is also positioned to be the dominant technology for L- and S-Band radar for both defense and civil applications.

This obviously matters when one discusses the wireless infrastructure RF power segment. For approximately the last decade, GaN has not made meaningful penetration into the wireless infrastructure segment, the industry’s largest, because of cost issues. As mentioned in the previous section of this ABI Insight, pricing has gotten better and GaN is now grabbing wireless infrastructure market share.

Base station RF topologies have also changed and Remote Radio Heads (RRH) and distributed base stations normally use slightly smaller devices that help mitigate the pricing issue.

At present, GaN has a slightly greater than 30% share for wireless infrastructure for 2019. This will undoubtedly increase to greater than 50% at the end of the current five-year cycle, at which point GaN will be the dominant technology.

Bear in mind as well that, as 5G New Radio (NR) mid-band (2.5 to 6 GHz) deploys, GaN’s position will become even more entrenched as the frequencies above 4 GHz will need to use either GaN or Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), with the former being the choice for higher power applications.

The previous two sections have described the device market landscape in brief, but as GaN becomes the dominant technology vendors will need to position themselves to participate in this segment to some degree to prevent themselves from being squeezed out of the market.

All need to be vigilant in regard to the following:

• The rollout of 5G, especially above 4 GHz, will require GaN technology.
• Base station technologies are evolving and the RRH and distributed base station will, to some degree, mutate upward to distributed arrays with individual amplifiers.
• High-power radar systems will certainly go with GaNGaN RF power—especially dual-band topologies such as C-Band and X-Band arrays.
• Not every vendor will be able to do in-house GaN manufacturing, so gaining capability will be driven by acquisition, strategic partnerships, and foundry services where appropriate. The important thing is to get positioned.