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Summary: Challenges and Opportunities for Compound Semiconductor
Devices in Next Generation Wireless Base Station Power Amplifiers
Lawrence Larson, Peter Asbeck, and Donald Kimball
Center for Wireless Communications, Dept of ECE, UCSD, La Jolla, CA 92093
Abstract -- Power Amplifiers for cellular base stations
represent a major commercial market opportunity for GaAs,
SiC and GaN FET devices. As carriers upgrade their
networks to 3G services in the coming years, it is expected
that the market for base station power amplifiers will grow to
well over $2B/year. These amplifiers typically produce 20-
80W of RF power, have exacting linearity requirements and
extreme price sensitivity.
Compound semiconductor devices have a clear potential
performance advantage over silicon LDMOS devices for this
application, but today LDMOS remains the "technology-of-
choice" for most base stations. This paper will summarize
the commercial market, system requirements, linearization
techniques, and technology choices for 3G base stations.
I. INTRODUCTION
The cellular base station market is in the middle of the
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