Qorvo is sampling a 5.2 to 5.9 GHz switched filter bank, the QPB1055, that integrates bulk acoustic wave (BAW) filtering with switching, routing and control — a combination the company says has not been available as a single C-band IC and has forced radar designers to assemble discrete filters, switches and RF routing instead. Two companion GaN power amplifiers, the 50 W QPA2311 and the 200 W QPA0018, round out the release. Samples and evaluation kits for all three devices are available now.

The parts target pulsed electronically steered array (ESA) systems at C-band, where frequency agility across the 5.2–5.9 GHz span is the core requirement and transmit efficiency directly sets the DC power and thermal budget of the array.

What problem does the QPB1055 solve?

Until now, achieving frequency agility at C-band meant building the filter bank from discrete components: separate filters, switches and the RF routing between them. Each discrete stage adds insertion loss, board area and part-to-part variation. The QPB1055 moves that function onto one IC by combining BAW resonators with the switching, routing and control circuitry.

Qorvo positions the result as contiguous coverage across the band with a combination of high Q, low insertion loss and small footprint that a discrete implementation cannot match. The physics matters here: BAW resonators store acoustic energy in a vertically oriented piezoelectric stack, so the resonator's Q scales with film quality rather than with lateral dimension, the constraint that limits conventional on-chip lumped or distributed filters at these frequencies. That is what lets an integrated filter bank reach the selectivity a C-band radar receiver needs without the PCB real estate of a discrete bank.

How do the PAs change the transmit chain?

On the transmit side, the two GaN amplifiers attack the DC power and heat problem from opposite ends. The QPA2311 delivers 50 W output power at 55% power-added efficiency. The QPA0018 delivers 200 W and, at that power level, eliminates the external high-power driver stage that limited-gain amplifiers have previously required. Fewer driver stages means fewer components in the transmit chain and less DC overhead ahead of the final amplifier.

These figures are vendor datasheet claims tied to the sample announcement; Qorvo has not published the test conditions — pulse width, duty cycle, drain voltage or temperature — alongside them. Buyers evaluating the 55% PAE number for a specific ESA duty cycle will need those conditions from the full datasheet or bench time with the evaluation kits.

How does this fit the wider portfolio?

The three new devices join Qorvo's existing C-band catalog: limiters, low-noise amplifiers, switches and driver amplifiers. Together they give radar customers receive and transmit building blocks backed by the company's BAW, GaN and system-level RF expertise.

Diwakar Vishakhadatta, VP of Defense & Aerospace Products at Qorvo, framed the release as a deliberate push into the gaps the market left open. "We are investing across the C-band radar front end where frequency agility and transmit efficiency are problems the market has left open," he said. "For customers, this means less custom receive design and higher transmit power without growing the DC power budget."

His second clause is the adoption argument in one sentence: the receive path shifts from custom discrete design to a catalog part, and the transmit path gains power density without a corresponding increase in DC draw.

Who should sample these parts?

The natural fit is pulsed ESA programs at C-band — weather, surveillance and air-traffic radar architectures among them — where 5.2–5.9 GHz agility is mandated and where array-level thermal design is dominated by front-end efficiency. Designers currently carrying a discrete filter bank and an external driver stage can quantify the trade directly: insertion loss and board area saved on receive, driver stages and DC watts eliminated on transmit, against the integration risk of a first-generation IC.

The open question for any program manager evaluating the release is whether an integrated BAW switched filter bank can hold its high-Q, low-loss performance across a full military temperature range and over the calibration interval the system's receiver budget assumes. Qorvo's evaluation kits, available now, are the fastest route to that answer.