Qorvo’s new Wi-Fi BAW filters triple range for smart home and enterprise applications

Qorvo Inc of Greensboro, NC, USA (which provides core technologies and RF solutions for mobile, infrastructure and defense applications) has announced new bulk acoustic wave (BAW) filters that significantly expand Wi-Fi range and coverage in smart home and enterprise applications. The products enable the maximum power allowed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the industrial, scientific & medical (ISM) band, delivering more capacity and resulting in improved service quality for consumers, organizations and internet service providers, says Qorvo.

Leveraging the firm’s BAW technology, the new band-edge and coexistence Wi-Fi filters address the stringent thermal challenges of multi-user multiple-input/multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems, without compromising harmonic compliance and emissions performance. This is critical to achieving reliable coverage across the full allocated spectrum. They also offer significant size reductions to help designers create smaller, more attractive end-user devices for homes and office environments, says Qorvo.

“A high proportion of the more than 1.5 billion Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones that will ship this year will be able to operate in Western Europe, China, and/or North America using LTE B7, B38, B40, or B41,” according to Christopher Taylor, director of RF & Wireless Components at market research firm Strategy Analytics. “These bands lie directly above and below the 2400-2483MHz global Wi-Fi band, requiring compact, low-temperature-drift filters to prevent interference between Wi-Fi and LTE. Qorvo’s filters meet the needs of the mobile and customer premises markets very effectively,” he comments.

“Qorvo has shipped 1 billion cellular coexistence filters optimized for consumer premises use and power handling,” says Cees Links, general manager of Qorvo’s Wireless Connectivity business. “These new band-edge and coexistence filters expand our product line and deliver the highest quality of service in high-density environments. Qorvo offers the most compact and most efficient solutions for MU-MIMO configurations of Wi-Fi networks,” he claims. “Designers no longer have to compromise on issues of performance or size, and consumers can connect to more devices across triple the range.”

Band-edge and coexistence filters improve quality of service for Wi-Fi systems. Band-edge filters allow systems to maintain maximum power and capacity for all channels in the Wi-Fi band. Qorvo claims to be the only supplier of band-edge BAW filters at 2.4GHz. Coexistence filters separate Wi-Fi signals from adjacent LTE signals to avoid interference. When maximum power for all Wi-Fi channels and LTE coexistence is required, both filters can be used together.

Qorvo is showcasing its wireless infrastructure products in booth #1510 at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2017) in Honolulu, Hawaii (4-9 June).