Wireless Net DesignLine

(05/27/2005 11:48 AM EDT)

Power levels and form factors continue to tumble in the 802.11 chip set market. The latest offering from Conexant Systems is an 802.11g-based radio for embedded mobile applications. The single-chip CX3110X is a power-efficient, compact IC aimed at high-performance, battery-operated mobile devices, such as multimedia cellular phones, enterprise handsets, PDAs, and digital cameras. The CX3110X is now shipping in volume quantities, and has already been designed into several handsets. A hardware and software reference design is also available to enable manufacturers and system integrators to rapidly integrate wireless connectivity into mobile platforms.

Using the company`s PowerSave power management technology to reduce power consumption, the CX3110X radio provides an intelligent power control capability, a low-power standby mode, and reduced peak and overall low power consumption for extended battery life. The standards-compliant device includes a zero intermediate frequency (ZIF) transceiver, RF synthesizer/voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), high-speed data converters, an ARM9-based media access controller (MAC), an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing/complementary code key (OFDM/CCK) digital baseband processor, and a complete power management unit (PMU). Host control is provided by a flexible serial peripheral interface (SPI) supporting 48-Mbit/s data rates. For maximum flexibility, the CX3110X accepts system reference clock frequencies of 19.2, 26, 38.4, and 40 MHz to provide coexistence with other cellular nodes. The device is packaged in a 12.5- by 7-mm, low-profile ball grid array (LPBGA), and is priced at $15 each in quantities of 10,000. More information is available at wwww.conexant.com.