1999-01-28 , S/IC-2005/431
Product News From Philips

Philips Semiconductors announced the availability of its IEEE 802.11-compliant chipset for the Wireless LAN market. The solution is the first wireless LAN chipset to merge antenna, radio and baseband capabilities into a tightly integrated solution suitable for PCMCIA applications and capable of supporting direct sequence and frequency hopping.

The Philips Semiconductors' wireless LAN chipset is the result of a successful partnership with Lucent Microelectronics, which supplies the WaveLAN™ baseband chipset for wireless LANs. The new solution includes three new chips, the  SA1630,  SA2410 and  SA2420, and also incorporates the Philips Semiconductors'  UMA1021 synthesizer released last year. This chipset leverages the performance improvement of direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) technology, which generates a redundant bit pattern for each bit of information transmitted.

The chipset combines silicon and Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) components and is one of the only solutions to support both DSSS and Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS). The GaAs component achieves high gain and low noise with a built-in switch, making it easier for system manufacturers to design-in support for wireless LANs or develop their own wireless LAN systems.

"Philips Semiconductors has achieved worldwide recognition for its' high-volume RF expertise, and its' application to the growing wireless LAN market is a natural progression", said Benno Ritter, marketing manager of Datacom products for Philips Semiconductors. "We are providing the highest level of integration in this industry and for the first time opening up the wireless LAN market to PCMCIA solutions."

The  SA1630 quadrature IF transceiver is a 70-400 MHz I/Q transceiver that contains both an up and down mixer driven by a common local oscillator (LO). The receive path contains a digitally gain-controlled linear IF amplifier, a pair of quadrature down conversion mixers and a pair of baseband amplifiers. The transmit path contains the up mixers, which transpose a quadrature baseband input signal up to IF frequency. To control power consumption, the transmit, receive and LO functions are combined into radio frequency ICs and can be powered down under digital control.

The Philips Semiconductors'  SA2410 is a 2.45 GHz RF power amplifier and transmitter/receiver switch. It is a GaAs-powered monolithic amplifier designed for Industrial Science Medicine (ISM) band and wireless LAN applications. The  SA2410 uses an on-chip 4 GHz oscillator to generate negative bias, eliminating the need for a negative power supply. It operates from 3V to 5.5V and consumes 125mA with an output of 18.5 dB.

The last component in the solution is the Philips Semiconductors'  SA2420 low voltage RF transceiver, a combined low-noise amplifier, receive mixer, transmit mixer and LO buffer IC designed for low-power, high-performance communications systems. It is well-suited to serve as a 2.45 GHz wireless LAN front-end. Fabricated on high volume BiCMOS technology, the  SA2420 provides low power consumption, excellent gain stability versus temperature and supply voltage and a wide IF range.

The IEEE 802.11 standard represents the first, internationally-recognized standard for wireless LAN, expanding customers' options with competitive solutions and products. This standard defines physical layer options for wireless transmission and Message Authentication Code (MAC) layer protocol, and further defines the protocol for two types of wireless LAN networks - ad-hoc and client/server.

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Philips Electronics NV, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the ninth largest semiconductor supplier in the world and the fourth largest supplier of discretes in the world. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by systems labs.

WaveLAN™ is a trademark of Lucent Microelectronics. All other trademarks are property of Philips Semiconductors.