Flex Power modules expand RFPA market presence with O-RAN and OpenRAN

     Flex Power Modules works closely with OpenRAN and the O-RAN Alliance, a global community of more than 160 mobile operators, suppliers, and research and academic institutions operating in the wireless Access network (RAN) industry. As a result, Flextronics power modules continue to increase their presence in the relevant RFPA (Radio frequency Power amplifier) market, and the range of RFPA isolated DC/DC converters continues to expand.

     As more countries and network operators roll out 5G services, there is a huge need to improve RFPA efficiency. According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), existing LTE (4G) RFPA solutions are not suitable to work in the 5G range due to frequency incompatibility, and therefore cannot achieve high efficiency if continued use.

     To overcome the challenge of balancing higher power with higher efficiency when creating RFPA, designers can take advantage of the benefits of DC/DC conversion technology. In fact, the latest DC/DC converter solutions from Flextronics power modules have laid the foundation for a significant increase in RFPA efficiency, thereby helping to improve the overall energy saving performance of the base station.

     Prominent among the offerings are the fully regulated analog DC/DC converter PKM-D series, the latest additions of which are PKM4516AD and PKM4516HD. Both are supplied in the form of industry standard 1/4 bricks, with an output of up to 18A/504W when using PKM4516AD with a nominal value of 28V; When using PKM4516HD with a nominal value of 50V, the output is up to 10A/500W. Crucially, both offer high efficiency: 95.5% at 28Vout half-load when using PKM4516AD; When using PKM4516HD, the half-load condition is 95.1% at 50Vout. In addition to providing a high MTBF (mean time to failure) of nearly 8 million hours, another key feature is the ability to adjust the output voltage up to +20%/-50%, which enables power to a wide range of power transistors and supports high linearity and efficiency optimization.

     As the industry predicts that 5G data rates will reach an estimated 107 exabytes (EB) per month by 2023, the energy saving factor is important. Currently, every gigabyte of Internet data requires about 5kWh to support, so if 5G is to be environmentally sustainable and economically viable, it will need to reduce power consumption significantly. To help further in this regard, initially at the base station level, designers of high-power RFPA are increasingly moving from LDMOS to gallium nitride (GaN) transistors due to their advantages of high breakdown voltage, high power density, large bandwidth, and higher efficiency.

     Another solution for Flextronics power modules is the PKJ4000 Series DC/DC converter in half brick form, which is targeted for higher power RFPA applications. The series delivers 28 or 50VDC voltages at up to 700W in an input voltage range of 36 to 75V. In addition, the company found that since 5V is usually required at different power levels in addition to 50V (mainly for GaN) or 30V (mainly for LDMOS), the 1/8 brick PKB-D series has also proved to be a popular support product.

     "There is growing demand for our DC/DC converter solutions from major wireless telcos, as well as companies entering the 5G space through the OpenRAN program - which aims to create an open, intelligent, virtualized and fully interoperable RAN to help accelerate the development of 5G." "We are leveraging our interactions with OpenRAN members to provide companies with a wide selection of DC/DC components suitable for RFPA applications," said James Zhang, Head of Sales for Flextronics Power Modules Asia Pacific.

     Flextronics Power modules are also developing new product solutions, such as the upcoming family of digital isolated DC/DC converters for RFPA - which will extend its benefits to include monitoring, configuration and control via the PMBus open protocol.Finally, the latest DC/DC converters for Flex power modules support key system factors such as density, integration, reliability, and efficiency, enabling a growing number of RFPA developers to shorten the design cycle and reduce time to market.