Microwave Engineering Europe - January/February 2009 - (Page 30)

30 PRODUCTS Low cost Bluetooth v2.1+EDR IC integrates GPS and FM transceiver in a tiny 11 mm CSR has launched BlueCore BC7830, which claims to be the smallest GPS combination device designed for mobile handsets. Measuring a mere 11 mm2 in silicon size, the BC7830 includes GPS, Bluetooth v2.1+EDR, FM transmit and receive technologies and support for Bluetooth low energy all on a single chip. This level of integration is made possible by the company’s ‘Smart Integration’ strategy, where the chip is speciﬁcally architected to support multiple radio technologies. According to the company, due to the analogue circuitry, shrinking the size of radio chips on a CMOS process needs to go beyond the beneﬁts that Moore’s law can provide and the only way to achieve radical size reduction, and therefore cost reduction, is to have deep innovation at an architectural level. CSR’s Connectivity Centre strategy exploits the high attach rates of its Bluetooth technology, integrating additional value added wireless technologies into its subsystem. This technique allows different wireless technologies to share resources and be aware of what the other on-chip elements are doing to ensure the best possible coexistence between the radios. BlueCore BC7830’s design enables handset designers to add GPS functionality to their products for less than a dollar. This ﬁgure includes incremental silicon cost as well as the external GPS components required (GPS 2 Stratum III compatible TCXO low noise, ±0.28 ppm frequency stability The TX057 Stratum III compatible TCXO (temperature-compensated crystal oscillator) family from Raltron Electronics boasts a frequency stability over temperature of ±0.28 ppm from -40 to +85 °C and an overall frequency stability of ±4.6 ppm, including 20 years aging. The Stratum III compatible TCXO measures 5- x 7-mm and suits applications such as wireless and wire-line communications, cellular infrastructure, point-topoint transmission, clock synchronization, test and measurement equipment, GPS tracking with precision holdover accuracy, and so on. The TCXO family features a low phase noise of -90 dBc/Hz at 10 Hz and -150 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz. The available frequency range is 10 to 52 MHz. The family features two different outputs, Clipped Sine or CMOS. Current consumption is low, at 1.2 mA for Clipped Sine at 13 MHz and 2.2 mA for CMOS output versions at 13 MHz. Both ﬁxed TCXO and TCVCXO conﬁgurations are available. www.mwee.com/212500857 antenna, associated ﬁltering and clocking components). BlueCore BC7830 will enable GPS to be added to many mid-range feature phone products where previously the cost was prohibitive. Such low cost, mass market GPS will, in turn, enable a host of Location Based Services (LBS), especially those based on the Push to Fix usage model. For example, geotagging photos/ movie clips or using Google Maps whilst lost are highly desirable GPS feature phone applications. LBS are predicted by ABI Research to generate huge revenue streams for operators, with a global annual revenue total forecast to reach $13.3 billion by 2013. BlueCore BC7830 also fully supports the forthcoming Bluetooth low energy standard. Because of the small incremental impact in terms of silicon area, and negligible cost of adding Bluetooth low energy to existing Bluetooth chips, the technology is expected to have the fastest uptake of any wireless technology to date. Bluetooth low energy was successfully demonstrated in a handset by CSR in July last year, and according to ABI Research the technology is predicted to ship over 428 million devices by 2010. www.mwee.com/213000016 ● Broadband digitally programmable IF VGA high OIP3 performance, improves signal integrity Linear Technology has introduced the LT5554, a broadband digitally programmable gain IF amplifier, featuring a 48 dBm OIP3 (output 3rd order intercept) at 200 MHz. Additionally, the amplifier has very low noise, enabling high dynamic range performance in wireless communication receivers and signal processing systems. Its gain is digitally controlled from 2 dB to 18 dB by a 7-bit parallel word, claiming the finest 0.125 dB steps gain control granularity of any IF amplifier on the market. The amplifier settles in under 5 ns from a gain change, producing low glitch noise and supporting fast and accurate AGC (Automatic Gain Control). Its output stage has robust capability to drive into 50-• loads with low distortion and noise. Consequently, it enables high spurious-free dynamic range performance in ADC systems. Unique to the LT5554 is consistently high OIP3 performance over a wide varying signal level range. In contrast, the closest competing solution is limited to only a narrow ±1 dB signal level range. With new generation wireless technology such as LTE and WiMAX, which use modulated signals with 12 dB crestfactor, the need to maintain linearity performance over wide operating levels is paramount for producing consistent basestation performance. Additionally the LT5554 has excellent gain accuracy of ±0.1 dB from -40 to 85 degrees Celsius, which is a five time improvement over the closest competing offering, which has accuracy of ±0.5 dB over similar temperature range. www.mwee.com/212500843 Microwave Engineering Europe ● January/February 2009 www.mwee.com http://www.mwee.com/212500857 http://www.mwee.com/213000016 http://www.mwee.com/212500843 http://www.mwee.com

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Microwave Engineering Europe - January 2009 News Contents Comment Using KPIs to Ensure Quality in a Converging Network Amplifier Error Vector Magnitude Characterisation Using High-Speed Modular PXI Instruments GPS: Making a Play for Femtocells Accelerating Global WiMAX Adoption: The Move to Picocell and Femtocell Base Stations Addressing PA Efficiency for Multi-Mode Wideband Handset Applications Wi-Fi: Mobile Feature or Fundamental RAN? Products Calendar

Microwave Engineering Europe - January/February 2009

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