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20 '' With 5G not only comes with an increased number of bands to get more capacity, but also massive MIMO to enable antennas to operate evenly in all directions. Design is very complex. The solution is to know your business and design within the constraints." Power Design Complicates RF Wireless Design These requirements mean that small cells are packed with subsystems and components, including MIMO systems, microwave and mmWave transceivers, FPGAs, faster data converters, and high-power/low-noise amplifiers. Each design block has its own power requirements. Power-conscious design of RF circuits, systems, and networks is only now becoming known, so there are few design methods and models to work from. What's more, the classic way of achieving a robust power solution was to use Linear power supplies or Switch Mode power supplies followed by post low dropout (LDO) regulators for individual rails. Now current RF designs rely more heavily on digital signal processing, and the use of these techniques can be power hungry. Increasing output power requires more transistors to deliver output power, which increases power consumption, reduces battery life, and increases costs. There are other factors that must be considered in the conversion of DC power to RF power as well, such as loss over the signal path, operating frequency, and loss from high amplifier linearity. Ed Long RF Design Engineer, Cambium Networks "Power is a separate design issue, but it's also highly integrated. It can no longer be an afterthought. Engineers need to shift their mindset so that power design and distribution is equally as important as front-end design." Steve Ahern Staff Applications Engineer, Analog Devices

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