Qorvo, a name that may seem unfamiliar to most, but upon dissecting nearly any smartphone, one can find a plethora of components from this global leader in RF, connectivity, and power management.
Established in 2015, Qorvo has swiftly risen to prominence and is now among the S&P 500 companies.
With over 8,500 employees worldwide, the company reported a revenue of $3.6 billion for the fiscal year 2023, with approximately 8 billion units shipped annually.
Through continuous expansion and acquisitions, Qorvo's product portfolio is robust, particularly renowned in the realm of smartphones. This includes independent and integrated PAs, antennas, filters, carrier aggregation envelope tracking, and RF front-end modules. Additionally, their expertise extends to Wi-Fi, UWB, power management, and pressure sensing.
These technologies and strengths have also permeated the automotive sector, encompassing RF, power management, as well as automotive and in-car connectivity (Wi-Fi/Matter/Bluetooth). UWB, in particular, has seen significant traction, while pressure sensing can replace many traditional mechanical buttons. Qorvo also contributes to motor control and power management in automobiles.
Moreover, Qorvo has made significant strides in various fields such as communication base stations, data centers, smart homes, wearables, motor management, white goods, and smart manufacturing.
Wi-Fi 7: A Comprehensive Solution for High Performance and Low Power Consumption
Qorvo, with its profound understanding and solutions, particularly excels in the booming field of Wi-Fi 7 wireless connectivity technology. Jeff Lin, Senior Marketing Manager of Qorvo's Wireless Connectivity Business Unit in the Asia-Pacific region, provided detailed insights into this.
With features like a maximum data rate of 46Gbps, 320MHz channels, 4K QAM modulation, and Multi-Link Operation (MLO), the key aspects of Wi-Fi 7 are well known. Additionally, it inherits the 6GHz band from Wi-Fi 6E.
However, due to varying policies across different countries and regions, the 6GHz band has not been fully opened up and might never be. The specific frequency allocations also differ.
For instance, the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, and several Latin American countries adopt the 5925-7125MHz band. Meanwhile, the European Union, Russia, Singapore, Mexico, Chile, South Africa, Malaysia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates are allocated the 5925-6425 MHz band. Australia, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, among others, use the 5925-6425 MHz band but are also considering the 6425-7125MHz band.
In June 2023, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology took the global lead in allocating the entire or partial 6425-7125MHz band for 5G/6G systems. Consequently, there is a possibility of assigning the 5925-6425MHz band to Wi-Fi, aligning with most international markets.
Lin Jianfu pointed out that the various technological leaps of Wi-Fi 7 pose very demanding challenges to the entire connectivity system, such as the need for more Front-End Modules (FEM), achieving at least -47dB Error Vector Magnitude (EVM), compatibility with Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD), efficient utilization of non-contiguous spectrum, and strengthening filtering performance to improve signal isolation.
For instance, regarding EVM, Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) only requires -30dB, Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) demands -35dB, and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ac) further increased to -43dB.
In response to these challenges, Qorvo has made significant progress in the Wi-Fi 7 field by providing complete wireless RF front-end module and filtering solutions, while also considering the advantages of low power consumption and small packaging, which can provide greater space and flexibility for product development.
Lin Jianfu further explained that to address the new challenges of Wi-Fi 7, Qorvo has adopted a solution using Non-Linear FEM+DPD. Through DPD compensation technology, it can achieve performance equivalent to Linear FEM with almost no processor power consumption.
This solution not only effectively addresses the EVM issue but also greatly improves energy efficiency. For example, it is estimated to save about 6 watts of power consumption on a tri-band 12-stream router.
Qorvo also provides linear Wi-Fi 7 FEM with excellent linearity, low power consumption, small packaging, and high integration characteristics.
Additionally, Qorvo offers a range of Bulk Acoustic Wave (BAW) filters specifically designed for different wireless frequency bands of Wi-Fi 6/6E/7, covering the complete spectrum from 5GHz (UNII 1-3) to the 6GHz segment (UNII 5-8).
Lin Jianfu revealed that Wi-Fi 8 is currently in the discussion phase and may take another four to five years to materialize. However, Wi-Fi 7 has already pushed existing technology to its limits, especially with 4K QAM.
Expecting Wi-Fi 8 to achieve 8K QAM is currently unrealistic but remains a challenge. It's hard to say what will happen next.
There's also the issue of the 6GHz frequency band, for which there may not be a single global standard or solution, considering that each country and region has its own regulations.
In fact, Wi-Fi 8 might not bring many groundbreaking innovations and could possibly incorporate elements from cellular communications.
Battery Management: Industry Leading with Single-Chip 20-Cell Solution
Whether it's smartphones, smart homes, wearable devices, or electric vehicles, batteries are the core power source. Besides continually optimizing and developing battery technology, efficiently managing batteries to ensure their safety, stability, and lifespan is paramount.
Qorvo boasts an extensive product portfolio in the power domain, including Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs), Power Loss Protection (PLP), DC/DC regulators, Battery Management Systems (BMS), intelligent motor control, Silicon Carbide (SiC), and more. These offerings cater comprehensively to power, protection, and control needs across industries such as industrial, enterprise, consumer electronics, automotive, and beyond.
Additionally, Qorvo provides the QSPICE software for analog and mixed-signal simulation, significantly enhancing engineers' productivity.
Yichi Zhang, Senior Customer Manager at Qorvo, introduces that in the field of BMS intelligent battery management technology, Qorvo innovatively integrates high-performance microcontrollers (MCUs) and analog front ends (AFEs) into a single chip, greatly simplifying system architecture while significantly improving system performance, reliability, and intelligence.
It is the first in the industry to achieve precise management of 20-cell battery packs on a single chip using mixed-signal technology, integrating controllers, storage, and communication interfaces, providing comprehensive support for different types of batteries such as lithium-ion, lithium-polymer, and lithium iron phosphate.
The chip also integrates algorithms for Fuel Gauging, SOC, SOH, etc., internally, which can greatly improve the accuracy and speed of data acquisition and calculation, enhancing flexibility.
Qorvo's BMS chip products currently have two series in mass production, both featuring single-chip solutions.
The PAC2214x series incorporates an Arm Cortex-M0 MCU with a clock speed of 50MHz, integrating 32KB Flash and 8KB SRAM, with a compact package size of just 9×9 millimeters.
The PAC2514x series boasts a higher-performing Arm Cortex-M4 MCU with a clock speed boosted to 150MHz. It offers increased Flash and SRAM capacities of 128KB and 32KB respectively, packaged in a size of only 10×10 millimeters.
Both series offer a comprehensive set of six functions, including charge and discharge management, short circuit protection, overcurrent and overvoltage protection, battery monitoring, battery balancing, and low power control. These functionalities enable full-scale battery management to optimize efficiency and lifespan while meeting safety and long endurance requirements.
Beyond hardware, Qorvo provides customers with extensive development resources, including hardware support, various tools, battery management algorithms and software, advanced algorithms, IDE development environments, and more. These resources significantly shorten development cycles, reduce product costs, and enhance product reliability and flexibility.
Sensor Fusion: Almost Any Field, Any Material Can Be Used
In this era of digital human-machine interaction, pressure sensing is a key focus for Qorvo, capable of replacing a multitude of other sensing methods. For instance, in automobiles, controls for the center console, body, doors, and windows can all be replaced by pressure sensing instead of traditional mechanical buttons.
In fact, practically any mechanical button you can think of can be replaced by pressure sensing.
Regardless of the field or device it's used in, sensors face extremely demanding requirements: precision and sensitivity must be very high, response speed must be very fast, size must be very small, power consumption must be very low, and adaptability to operating methods and environmental conditions must be very broad.
Qorvo has developed innovative Sensor Fusion solutions, including the MEMS Force and ForceGauge series, which can be widely used in smartphones, automobiles/motorcycles, smart homes, wearables, AR/VR mixed reality, motor management, white goods, smart manufacturing, and many other fields, with extensive implementation already in place.
This is a complete solution comprising MEMS sensors, ASIC chips, electromechanical integration structures, software, and more, capable of transforming traditional buttons into stylish, intelligent, and convenient control interfaces. It boasts excellent characteristics such as high precision, high sensitivity, high linearity, and ultra-low power consumption.
It supports multiple input methods, suitable for almost any material, including metal, plastic, glass, leather, and more, unaffected by most environmental factors.
For example, in automotive design, Qorvo's sensor fusion solution integrates pressure sensor technology with smart surfaces, preventing accidental touches and significantly enhancing driving experience and safety, thus further enriching user experience.
For instance, in wearable products, this solution overcomes the shortcomings of traditional capacitive touch and slide controls, such as large space occupation, insufficient control accuracy, and susceptibility to stains/liquids/weather, providing a thinner, simpler experience.
In smart home products, Qorvo's technology is more waterproof and dirt-resistant, with very high sensitivity and precision, making human-machine interaction more convenient, intelligent, and smooth.
Through this presentation of innovative achievements across multiple fields, Qorvo once again demonstrates its strong multifaceted technical capabilities, as well as its sensitivity to market dynamics and trends.
With its extensive technology and product portfolio, Qorvo is poised to continue advancing in various application areas such as mobile communication, infrastructure, power management, IoT, automotive electronics, and consumer electronics, meeting market demands for high-power, high-efficiency, and high-performance systems.
