By Gabby Chen

Geo-Chip (地芯科技), China's IC design startup, launched a new series of Fengxing GC0802 radio frequency (RF) transceiver chips mainly applied to 5G mobile communication base stations filling gaps in the Chinese market and empowering China's 5G networks, reported JW Insights on December 27.

Wu Ruixiang, general manager at Geo-Chip, told JW Insights in a recent interview that the bandwidth needs to reach at least 100 MHz or even 200 MHz to meet the 5G market standards.

Therefore, Geo-Chip will further expand its bandwidth and frequency. It is considering increasing the bandwidth to at least 200 MHz, Wu said.

With ultra-wideband and ultra-broadband advantages, Fengxing GC0802 chip series covers a full range of applications from 30 MHz to 6 GHz and majority of communication bands. Its bandwidth ranges from 12 kHz to 100 MHz, said the JW Insights report.

Founded in 2018, Geo-Chip is based in Hangzhou, eastern China's Zhejiang Province. It specializes in RF and system-level communication chip and efficient IoT communication solutions.

The RF transceiver chip costs nearly 20% to 30% of the entire small cell system, so domestic base station manufacturers are still facing huge cost pressures.

Meanwhile, China's RF transceiver chip's self-sufficiency rate is close to zero as it is difficult to develop. It is also one of the key technology bottlenecks in 5G mobile communications, according to the JW Insights report.

Currently, China has become the country with the largest number of 5G base stations worldwide. Statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) showed that China had built and opened a total of 1.425 million 5G base stations by the end of 2021, accounting for more than 60% of global 5G base stations.

So Geo-Chip sees more growth opportunities for RF chips as there will be more needs for 5G networks in various sectors and industries, said Wu.