First transceiver with direct digital polar modulation architecture
Polar modulation architecture reduces transmit power consumption by up to 30 percent, increasing battery life and talk time
Best receive sensitivity across all four bands reduces dropped calls
First transceiver with both digital and analog baseband interfaces, providing customers multiple baseband options
Superior levels of integration lowers bill of materials (BOM) cost
GREENSBORO, N.C. - January 3, 2004 - RF Micro Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: RFMD), a leading provider of proprietary radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs) for wireless communications applications, today announced production availability of its POLARIS™ 2 TOTAL RADIO™ solution.

Comprised of RFMD's POLARIS 2 transceiver and RFMD's industry-leading PowerStar® power amplifier module, RFMD's highly integrated POLARIS 2 transceiver solution is designed to support up to four frequency bands (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) and performs all the radio functions of GSM, GPRS and EDGE cellular handsets.

The POLARIS 2 transceiver is the industry's first transceiver featuring a unique direct digital polar modulator, which reduces transmit power consumption by approximately 30 percent when compared to other transmit architectures, including direct launch and polar loop transmitters. The POLARIS 2 transceiver's advanced transmit methodology provides handset developers advantages over alternative solutions in terms of ease of use and reduced heat dissipation, and it also provides consumers longer talk time and battery life.

The POLARIS 2 transceiver provides handset manufacturers a highly integrated radio solution in a small form factor that helps reduce component count and total cost while providing superior radio performance. In field tests with a leading baseband, the POLARIS 2 transceiver achieved better than -109 dBm receive sensitivity in the low bands and better than -108 dBm in the high bands, which represents the industry's best receive sensitivity across all four bands. Superior receive sensitivity helps reduce infrastructure costs and dropped calls. In addition to the industry's best receive sensitivity, the POLARIS 2 transceiver features increased dynamic range and the use of digital signal processing in the receiver for superior performance in fading and blocking conditions, which also reduces dropped calls.

The POLARIS 2 transceiver implements both very low IF (VLIF) and direct conversion receive (DCR) architectures and provides selectable analog I/Q and digital baseband interfaces, which enables ease of implementation with multiple leading baseband solutions. Additionally, by integrating voltage control oscillators (VCOs) and loop filter components, the POLARIS transceiver provides customers superior levels of integration and a lower bill of materials (BOM) cost than most currently available solutions.

The POALRIS 2 TOTAL RADIO solution is in production now and is priced at $8.50 in volumes of 100,000 units.