RF Micro Devices has announced the availability of a new family of laminate-based VCOs for cellular infrastructure and other high performance wireless transceiver applications. Highly Integrated VCOs Demonstrate Leading RF Performance and are 75% Smaller Than Existing Solutions.

The new RFVC975x product family leverages RFMD's expertise in the design and manufacture of low phase noise discrete VCOs, as well as RFMD's proprietary MicroShield(R) integrated RF shielding technology and RFMD's industry-leading scale in laminate multi-chip modules (MCMs).

As wireless infrastructure migrates to remote radio heads and distributed base stations, system designers are increasingly seeking solutions that push the performance envelope. The innovative RFVC975x family of laminate VCOs leverages RFMD's product leadership in VCOs and core competitive advantages to drive measurable advances in the key performance categories of size, weight and current consumption.

The RFVC975x family offers phase noise performance that meets or exceeds the requirements of 2G, 3G, and 4G (LTE and WiMAX) cellular base stations. Compared to the current generation of monolithic VCOs, the RFVC975x family of laminate VCOs provides improved phase noise and lower current consumption, lowering energy consumption and improving base station thermal management. The RFVC975x is also 75% smaller than today's signal source modules, while providing the same low phase noise performance, satisfying the trend toward smaller base station sizes for microcells and remote radio heads.

The RFVC975x family is a flexible platform that offers quick-turn custom solutions in both frequency and output power. This solution provides the flexibility, performance and current consumption of existing VCO modules, with the size advantage of monolithic VCOs.