Broadcom Introduces Single-Chip Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM Solution for Mobile Devices

Broadcom Corporation announced it has produced an advanced single-chip connectivity solution that combines Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM receiver technologies onto a single silicon die. This combination of popular radio capabilities in a new 65 nanometer CMOS system-on-a-chip allows manufacturers to provide rich connectivity features without a prohibitive impact on product cost, size or battery life.

The Broadcom BCM4325 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM transceiver features IEEE 802.11a/b/g (MAC, baseband and radio), support for Bluetooth 2.0 and an advanced FM receiver. The BCM4325 design reduces the overall footprint size and required external components. In addition, it delivers 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 extend the battery life and reduce memory requirements.

The BCM4325 utilizes BroadRange technology, which ensures 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.

The BCM4325 also supports all of the rich features included with the Bluetooth 2.0 specifications and is upgradeable to version 2.1 of the standard. The FM radio receiver supports the European Radio Data Service and the North American Radio Broadcast Data Service.