How Qualcomm Is expanding Its RFFE Market

Changes will benefit automotive, XR, PC, wearable, mobile broadband, IoT and other technologies.

In June, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. announced the release of new radio frequency front end (RFFE) modules that will enhance experiences for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 6E and the next generation standard, Wi-Fi 7. The modules, which transmit and receive radio signals between other devices, should advance automotive, wearable and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. This is a level of diversification beyond the classic smartphone offering.

“[We are] helping OEMs address their massive industry-specific challenges like development cost and scalability,” says Christian Block, senior vice president and general manager RFFE, Qualcomm Germany (RFFE GmbH). “OEMs using our solutions can design products with higher performance, longer battery life, and reduced commercialization time. Ultimately, [this will accelerate] the pace of innovation and deliver improved experiences to consumers.”

The new RFFEs are a modem-to-antenna offering that help OEMs speed up product development to reduce time to market, says Max Rodrigues, manager of product marketing for RF360 Europe GmbH, to engineering.com.

“The very precise front-end solutions help guarantee you won’t have interference across a wide array of environments. They’re how we’re increasing speed, improving data rates and providing more network capacity,” says Rodrigues.

Qualcomm’s changes to RFFE modules should also facilitate collaboration with other companies to produce new devices, according to Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala’s interview with Yahoo! Finance.

One of the reasons these collaborations are imminent is that President Biden’s August 2022 signing of the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act (CHIPS Act). The federal legislation allocates over $52.7 billion in federal funding for research, development and domestic manufacturing of semiconductors.

Palkhiwala says that from an overall supply perspective, Qualcomm already uses a great deal of capacity to address the chip shortage, especially with GlobalFoundries and Samsung.

“We’ve been working with these players over the last couple of years to expand their capacity. [That’s] helped us address some of the supply constraints. So, our plan is still in place in the short term. Longer term, we think the CHIPS Act is important,” Palkhiwala says in the interview.

Why It’s Key to Improve RFFEs

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a high demand for connected devices. The interest in working from any environment during the pandemic increased that demand. Rodrigues says consumers are looking for products that can perform different tasks quickly and easily.

“People are moving between different locations, such as home, school, connected trains and workplaces. They want devices that can accomplish tasks on whatever networks are available. A device should be able to utilize multiple channels of Wi-Fi and guarantee a low loss of power for all-day battery life,” says Rodrigues.

Consumers are also looking for products that last for years. This is difficult to achieve as generations of networks are developed. While an OEM wants to reduce the development cycle of new products, a consumer wants a smartphone that can run equally well on different networks like Wi-Fi 6E, which is Wi-Fi 6 extended to the 6 GHz band, and Wi-Fi 7. That frequency range is from 6 GHz to 7 GHz. Smartphones accomplish the task by having the ability to work well across different frequency bands.

The frequency range of a system is the range in which it offers adequate performance, producing a useful level of signal with minimal distortion. If a smartphone is not designed to perform across a specific frequency band, it will not work with the wireless networking technology associated with that band.

Rodrigues says that designing a smartphone that can work with the latest technologies means improving its RF front end. An RF front end contains the components that condition wireless signals right before or after they reach an antenna, optimizing the radio waves to a usable form.

Qualcomm is currently addressing RF design challenges by improving front-end module design and high-quality bandpass filters (BPFs). BPFs are devices that pass frequencies within a certain range and reject frequencies that are outside that range.

A Wi-Fi front-end module accomplishes this goal with a set of integrated RF components that amplify and route signals between the Wi-Fi system on a chip (SoC) and antennas. The components typically include power amplifiers (PAs), low noise amplifiers (LNAs), filters and switches packaged inside a module. FEMs work on the receive side by having the integrated LNA boost weak incoming RF signals. On the transmit side, the integrated PA boosts the outgoing RF signals delivered from the Wi-Fi SoC.

Qualcomm codesigns the PA and LNA together in-house. This helps the two components work together efficiently. It also integrates the PA and LNA cleanly onto the SoC. The layout gives an OEM the opportunity to place a FEM right next to each Wi-Fi antenna. This results in an optimal board layout. With this approach, the trace length between each antenna and the amplifiers is minimized.

Designing for Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7

The improvements to the FEMs for Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 allow the devices to easily access apps for AR, VR, gaming and the metaverse. Such applications must run on high-speed networks with low latency. Otherwise, it would take too long for data to pass between points on a network. The higher bandwidths, ranges of frequencies in given bands, and more complex modulation schemes and techniques to carry digital data over analog waveforms require FEM designs that utilize tools like Qualcomm’s latest ultraSAW and ultraBAW filter technologies.

UltraSAW filter technology works for frequencies ranging from 600 MHz to 2.7 GHz, while ultraBAW filter technology works for frequencies ranging from 2.7 GHz to 7 GHz. A mobile device with multiple filter technologies can offer high performance at multiple frequencies.

As a group, Qualcomm’s improvements assist with minimizing interference, reducing power consumption and dissipating thermal heat while accessing high frequencies. Qualcomm is currently sampling its new Wi-Fi FEMs to various customers. It expects 5G devices featuring the new FEMs to launch in the second half of 2022.

Rodrigues says that the new FEMs are relevant for engineers working in AI, IoT and hardware connected to the cloud. This is because more workers are mobile and for them connectivity has become an essential tool.

“When pandemic restrictions eased, I was amazed to see so many people in Germany take tablets on the trains. They can only do that if connectivity is in place. What we’re doing at Qualcomm is adding entry points for connectivity. At the same time, we’re improving how devices connect. Workers need both things to be efficient and flexible,” says Rodrigues.

Rodrigues adds that Qualcomm hopes to reduce the number of impediments with its products.

“We want a smartphone to be able to make a Video over Long-Term Evolution (ViLTE) video call or on the 5G network. The smartphone should also be able to coexist with Wi-Fi 7. The goal is for the smartphone not to be jitter sensitive, or experience variations in time delay between when the signal is transmitted and when it is received over a network connection. Qualcomm’s RFFEs make it possible for devices to operate efficiently no matter what network they use,” says Rodrigues.

Max Rodrigues, manager of product marketing, RF360 Europe GmbH. Photo credit: Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Max Rodrigues, manager of product marketing, RF360 Europe GmbH. Photo credit: Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.