Integration Creates Compact CDMA RF Front End With GPS Capability

By Allen Chien, Saul Espino, and Won Kyu Kim, Avago Technologies

The worldwide cell phone market is large and very competitive. Even during the 2009 economic downturn, forecasts for worldwide cell phone shipments are expected to reach 1.1 billion units with over 300 million shipments in the final quarter of 2009. Consumers now demand long talk-time in tandem with more capability, such as GPS and multimedia. Selecting a long-term, reliable vendor with the best technology and system knowledge that can integrate the technology into a compact, low-cost design is essential in the fast moving mobile communications market where a missed market cycle can lead to lost market share.

In this article, design requirements, best practice PCB layout, component selection and system design will be addressed. A highly integrated CDMA plus GPS RF front end design with measured performance characteristics will be used as a concrete example. The three Avago RF modules used are: the ACPM-7353 dual-band Power Amplifier Module designed for CDMA (code division multiple access) cellular and PCS; the ACFM-7103 multiplexer; and the ALM-1412 GPS Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) with Integrated Filter. These three compact components replace seven discrete components.