Amalfi Semiconductor unveiled the industry's first CMOS-based Power Amplifier chip for GSM/EDGE cellular handset phones. The AM8901 power amplifier is part of the company's new Stratos CMOS power amplifier product family for cellular phone applications. Differing from other power amplifiers, the Stratos power amplifiers use an industry standard bulk CMOS manufacturing process. The majority of cellular power amplifiers use a gallium arsenide process, because CMOS solutions typically cannot achieve the required high output power needed for cellular phones at high efficiencies.

    The product family is based on an innovative CMOS silicon architecture that reduces the battery's electrical current requirements in cellular phones. This reduction sets a new performance standard in the cellular industry that will enable manufacturers to deliver phones with greater than 20 percent improvement in usage time, thinner designs and additional functionality, such as mobile TV, MP3 player and video camera. Amalfi's CMOS power amplifiers also improve manufacturability and lower overall system cost of cellular phones.

    Amalfi's proprietary silicon architecture, AdaptiveRF, was specifically designed for the development of CMOS power amplifiers and has proven to achieve competitive peak performance and better Power Added Efficiency (PAE) in the typical operation ranges relative to leading GaAs power amplifiers. For example, a GaAs PA device would need to exceed 60% PAE at maximum output power to match Amalfi's performance in the mid-range operating power levels applicable to GSM and EDGE cellular mobile handsets.

    "We have demonstrated that our Stratos CMOS power amplifiers with AdaptiveRF technology can outperform GaAs in many significant metrics," said Jim Finch, Co-founder and CEO of Amalfi Semiconductor. "In the most important area of battery life or usage time, we are able to deliver an entirely new efficiency curve to the industry that will enable a revolutionary change in future designs and performance capabilities of cellular handsets. This is just the beginning for CMOS power amplifiers in the cellular handset market!"

    The AM8901 is able to operate in both GSM/GPRS and EDGE (open loop polar modulator) modes and supports four frequency bands – 850MHz, 900MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz. With integrated 50Ω input and output matching plus DC blocking and harmonic filtering, no additional passive components are required. Amalfi Semiconductor’s patented AdaptiveRF™ architecture enables the AM8901 to achieve much higher efficiencies by switching to a lower power mode which results in longer talk and data transmit times in EDGE mobile handsets. This new architecture also achieves linearity of less than 2% EVM under 8PSK (EDGE) signal modulation and is able to operate down to 2.7V with minimal impact to performance.

Features of the AM8901 power amplifier allow manufacturers to:
    - A unique extended efficiency mode provides greatly increased performance relative to traditional Power Amplifiers at typical transmit power levels.
    - Patented AdaptiveRF Architecture enables the device to achieve optimum performance in all real-world operations.  Compensates for drift in performance over time and other factors such as process, temperature, frequency and voltage and gracefully reduces output power to ensure stable and robust operation even under extreme operating conditions.
    - 2000V Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) Protection per the Human Body Model (HBM) on all pins, including the Radio Frequency (RF) pins to enable higher manufacturing yields.
    - Manufactured in a standard bulk CMOS technology available through the world's leading foundry partners, and supported by industry leaders in packaging, assembly, and test.