“We’re excited to finally bring all the pieces together and announce this important milestone on the path to commercial 5G. This will have a big role to play in the upcoming connectivity revolution,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, Executive Vice President and Head of Next Generation Communications Business Team at Samsung Electronics.
The new RFIC was announced by Samsung at a 5G mobile technologies workshop. It gave details about the development and the strengths of the chip and also outlined its role in the roadmap to commercial 5G products. The chip has been designed to “greatly strengthen” the overall performance of 5G access units. Samsung has particularly focused on designing it for low cost, high efficiency and compact form factors. The chip uses a high-gain/high-efficiency power amplifier that Samsung unveiled in June last year.
This enables the RFIC to provide extended coverage in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band, overcoming a big challenge of high-frequency spectrum. It also provides improved transmission and reception performance. The RFIC is destined for use in the 28GHz mmWave spectrum band, making it a primary target for early 5G deployments in marks like the United States, Japan and South Korea. Now that development on the chip is complete, Samsung is going to accelerate its plans for 5G commercial product readiness and expects to announce the first RFIC-equipped solutions by early next year.
