Atheros Introduces High-Speed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Miniature Chips

Atheros Communications has announced, during the International Solid State Circuits Conference, that it has readied a new chip to integrate wireless and Bluetooth services. The papers presented during the conference revealed a small chip to offer both functionalities that can be easily integrated inside mobile phones and handheld devices.

"We are very proud of the die size of this chip," said Masoud Zagari, director of analog engineering at Atheros, after having delivered a paper on the integrated 802..11n chip. According to Zagari, his paper was the first report of a 802.11n processor that integrates radio and baseband functionalities. The chip is just 32 square millimeters, which is extremely important for its success on the market, since other vendors are "cooking" their own versions.

The chip is ready and completely functional and is slated for mass availability soon. It uses a 2x2 MIMO channel architecture and can pump up data at about 205 Mb/second. However, the vendors will be able to link chips for achieving four-channel links with data rates up to 600 Mb/second.

Another innovation from Atheros comes in the form of an integrated Bluetooth 2.1 chip. Measuring only 9.2 square-millimeters, the die made it possible to achieve the smallest chip of its kind. In fact, Atheros' device is one square millimeter smaller than the smallest chips announced by Broadcom at the last year's event.

"We picked analog architectures for the smallest die area," said Dave Weber, an analog design manager who presented the paper. "A few pennies are the difference that makes your profit margin in Bluetooth these days," he added.

ST Microelectronics came with its own approach at integrating 802.11n and WiMax into a single chip to be used in telecommunications. This would bring WiMax one step closer to the nowadays' cellphones. ST Microelectronics described two blocks that can transmit and receive signals in the 2.4 GHz radio spectrum.

The chip can handle both WiMax and 802.11n Wi-Fi and delivers data rates up to a Mb/s over a 10 MHz WiMax band. "There are a lot of cellular companies interested in WiMax these days including Motorola and Sprint," said Andras Pozsgay, RF R&D project leader at ST Microelectronics.