Wisair Releases Pre-Production Low Power MBOA RF Chip Using IBM Technology

Tokyo -- IDF Japan -- Wisair today released its second generation fully monolithic WiMedia-MBOA radio frequency (RF) transceiver 502 chip, leveraging Wisair as the first UWB provider to embark on pre-production. The new 502 chip has been integrated into Wisair's reference designs and is available for customers, enabling OEMs to rapidly develop their own UWB-based applications.

"IBM is pleased that Wisair has selected our 0.18um SiGe BiCMOS technology for their pre-production UWB RF transceiver chip. This is the second successful RF chip that Wisair has developed using IBM SiGe technology and its price, performance and model maturity enables Wisair to ship competitive UWB solutions to its customers," said Teddy O'Connell, manager for business development, IBM Systems & Technology Group, Semiconductor Offerings.

The fully MB-OFDM standard compliant 502 chip highlights Wisair's market leading expertise in UWB RFIC technology: "In preparation towards our pre- production phase we have developed a second generation proven performance silicon RF chip that is poised to help our customers significantly reduce their power consumption and overall cost of UWB solutions. Our small die-size 502 RF chip is a fully integrated MB-OFDM RF transceiver with less than 10 external passive components," said David Yaish, Wisair president and CEO.

The 502 chip replaces the 501 version which was the industry's first WiMedia - MB-OFDM compliant transceiver providing bit rate up to 480 Mbps. The 501 chip was shipped to over 35 industry leading customers, from the PC, CE, mobile phone and module vendor segments. The second generation 502 chip experienced a further reduction in power consumption and its die size was significantly reduced.

The 502 chip provides antenna diversity by supporting two antennas simultaneously. It supports MB-OFDM TFI and FFI modes and occupies a frequency spectrum range between 3.1GHz to 4.8GHz with three sub-bands of 528 MHz each.

The 502 chip incorporates internal filtering providing coexistence with Bluetooth as well as 802.11a/b/g.

Source: Wisair