TAIPEI, Taiwan — Within a year, most of the smartphone developers adapted the envelope tracking (ET) IC in their flagship handsets. Explore Microelectronics General Manager Wu Jin-rong said that it's all because of the demand of electricity is getting higher so that how to extend the battery life is a challenge of all the handset makers.
“As entering the 4G era, smartphones need to support multi-band, including dual-band, tri-band, quad-band and penta-band, which means it consumes more and more electricity, and the big-screen and high-resolution features also require more electricity.” Wu Jin-rong added.
Wu Jin-rong pointed out that smartphone makers do their best in searching and finding components to advace the efficiency of electricity, ET IC was first adapted by Samsung Galaxy S5 mini and LG G2 in the fourth quarter of last year, and within a year, most of the new flagship handsets were adapted envelope tracking IC.
After Samsung and LG, HTC, Sony, and ZTE have adapted ET IC in its new handsets. Improving the battery life, adding data processing capacity, and dissipating heat. ET IC technology is an approach to Radio Frequency (RF) amplifier design in which the power supply voltage applied to the power amplifier is continuously adjusted to ensure that the amplifier is operating at peak efficiency for power required at each instant of transmission.
Furthermore, Qualcomm is currently the major supplier of ET IC, the QFE1100 ET/PM IC is adapted by major flagship handsets in the market. ET IC relies on the application processor and baseband IC to communicate with amplifier in the system level that is easily for Qualcomm to develop such technology.
In a addition to Qualcomm, Other component makers evaluating the technology include R2 Semiconductor, Mediatek, RF Micro Devices, Skyworks, Texas Instruments, Analog Devices, Nujira and Eta Devices.
