Mobile handsets, media players and handheld wireless systems have made recent leaps in sophistication, enabling service providers to offer compelling applications such as web browsing, instant messaging, e-mail, advanced multimedia, VoIP phone calls, photo sharing, as well as innovative connected services like weather and personal navigation. Critical to the success of these advanced handheld devices (which are now appearing in the market) are ultra-low power solutions for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other radio technologies that enable an array of connectivity options.
Adding multiple additional chips to mobile devices, however, impedes the trend toward increasing compact, low-power products. Until now, integrating these technologies in a single product was challenging since multiple radios in the same band can lead to self-interference. Broadcom has solved these issues with today's product introduction.
"Integrating multiple wireless technologies onto a single chip is a landmark achievement that will be welcomed by mobile device manufacturers due to the inherent cost, space and power savings it will enable," said Stuart Carlaw, wireless research director at ABI Research. "By leveraging its unique expertise in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM radio, Broadcom has broken through a major technical barrier that will help accelerate the feature sets of the next-generation of connected mobile devices."
"Mobile handsets are rapidly evolving into the central point of personal communications, entertainment and information for large numbers of consumers," said Robert A. Rango, senior vice president and general manager of Broadcom's Wireless Connectivity Group. "Our new Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and FM transceiver will help to drive this evolution and enhance devices like digital music players by dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of these key wireless technologies in innovative mobile devices."
Technical Data
Adding both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to small consumer devices, such as mobile handsets, presents significant integration challenges for any silicon provider. The highly integrated BCM4325 design addresses these silicon challenges by reducing the overall footprint size and required external components. The BCM4325 is an ultra-low power solution utilizing advanced design techniques that deliver the lowest active and idle power consumption (up to 40% lower than competitive solutions) combined with a software architecture that offloads the host processor to dramatically extend handheld device battery life and reduce memory requirements.
The BCM4325 utilizes BroadRange technology, which provides robust range performance to ensure consistent connections to the Wi-Fi access points. The chip also features Broadcom's InConcert technology, which consists of sophisticated software algorithms and hardware mechanisms that enable collaborative co-existence between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, since both operate in the 2.4 GHz radio frequency range. By integrating Bluetooth with WLAN, the BCM4325 can more intelligently operate both technologies, allowing the option for a shared antenna system to further reduce board area requirements and provide the capability to co-exist with additional external radio technologies.
