Broadband RF amps

, CO-based

has been awarded a

patent that discloses a means for improving efficiency, temperature and supply voltage robustness of wideband Darlington-based RF amplifiers.

The Darlington amplifier has evolved into a ubiquitous RF building block used as pre-drivers in base station and cellular repeater transceivers, fibre optic receivers, CATV and test and instrumentation applications.

“This new patent describes a key step forward in the evolution of the Darlington amplifier and enables improvements of over 35 percent in RF efficiency while using lower supply voltage operation for a wide range of wireless applications,” stated Kevin Kobayashi, executive engineering fellow. According to Kobayashi, the patent has already been applied to the company's recently released SBB InGaP amplifier series.

“This patent enables us to deliver the same RF power from a lower supply, resulting in increased RF efficiency. This is important for a wide variety of RF applications, including wireless infrastructure and mobile as well as fixed wireless applications," added Joe Johnson, chief technical officer.