Tower Semiconductor announces new RF switch technology

04 August 2020

Tower Semiconductor has announced a new radio frequency (RF) switch technology with record figure of merit targeting the 5G and high-performance RF switch markets.

The switch technology enables more efficient RF system architectures in applications including mobile, base-station and mmWave communications. Tower Semiconductor said that it was engaged with multiple customers and partners to bring this technology to market for next-generation products.

This switch technology demonstrates a record RF device figure of merit: Ron x Coff < 10 femtoseconds vs. 70-100 femtoseconds in use today for the most advanced applications. The switch performs over an extremely wide range of frequencies spanning MHz to all frequency bands discussed for 5G, and further into the mmWave. This results in extremely low insertion loss and very small device size.

The switch is also non-volatile, as a result it consumes no energy when in the on-state or off-state, making it attractive for IoT, and other power and battery sensitive product applications. Tower has also demonstrated the versatility of this patented technology by integrating it with some of its other process platforms such as SiGe BiCMOS and Power CMOS.

Tower Semiconductor said that it will be offering multi-project wafer runs (MPWs) in 2021 for select customers.

Author
Neil Tyler