GaN power transistors are efficient for wireless basestations
9 June 2016 
The MAGb-101822-240B0P and MAGb-101822-120B0P provide 320 and 160W output peak power, respectively, in the load-pull system with fundamental tuning only. They cover all cellular bands and power levels within the 1.8 to 2.2GHz frequency range. Part of the MAGb series of GaN on silicon power transistors for macro wireless basestations, they are offered in a rugged, low-cost plastic TO-272 package.
The transistors operate over 400MHz of bandwidth, which precludes the need to use multiple LDMOS-based products. According to the company, this further optimizes cost and design efficiencies.
They deliver power efficiency up to 79% – an improvement of up to 10% compared to LDMOS offerings, claims the company, with only fundamental tuning across the 400MHz RF bandwidth, and with linear gain of up to 20dB. As an alternative to ceramic-packaged devices, thermal behavior is improved by 10%, compared with ceramic packaged devices in the series.
A symmetric Doherty amplifier design maintains RF performance compared to the asymmetric Doherty topologies used by LDMOS-based transistors.