October 17, 2000

Wireless in the limelight
Chip announcements presage 3G devices

The UMTS (universal mobile telecommunication services) 2000 conference, held in Barcelona, Spain, from October 11 to 13 featured product announcements of interest to developers of 3G cellular communications systems. In addition, several chipmakers have recently announced breakthrough devices and processes that, in one way or another, promise to accelerate the performance of next-generation handheld devices.

PrairieComm introduced a dual-mode wireless baseband processor chip called the PCI5110 that supports the emerging UMTS standard for 3G cellular communications. Incorporating both W-CDMA and GSM technologies, the PCI5110 also enables GPRS (general packet radio service) for high-bandwidth mobile communications.

Built around an ARM 32-bit RISC microprocessor core, the device offers support for data-intensive multimedia applications, as well as WAP (wireless application protocol) and Bluetooth. The device transmits at a maximum data rate of 384 kbits/sec and supports Turbo Coding for high data transmission. Sampling now, the PCI5110 operates at 1.8 volts and includes a USB interface capable of 12 Mbits/sec.

For more information: www.prairiecomm.com

InterDigital Communications announced that it is expanding its UMTS product portfolio for the 3G wireless market to include base stations modems, radio resource management software, and other devices in addition to the SOC modems it already produces for mobile end-user devices.

InterDigital's next-generation 3G W-CDMA ASICs will include an integral DSP (digital signal processor) and microprocessor, I/O ports, Bluetooth support, location-services support, multimedia support, an advanced RF interface, and peripheral interfaces. In addition, InterDigital is also developing both FDD (frequency division duplex) and TDD (time division duplex) W-CDMA technologies that will be compliant with the 3G standard.

For more information: www.interdigital.com

Infineon Technologies introduced SiGe (silicon germanium) BiCMOS (bipolar complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology that integrates bipolar transistors with transit frequencies up to 75 GHz. Infineon's BiCMOS technology can be used to create high-speed, low-power IC designs for next-generation mobile communication applications. Infineon says that it has already used the B7HFc process to build a 10-GHz PLL (phase locked loop) circuit that features improved RF performance and a 50 percent reduction in supply current, compared with conventional Silicon BiCMOS designs.

For more information: www.infineon.com

Agilent Technologies announced its own power-saving semiconductor process for wireless applications, dubbed E-pHEMT, which aims to enable RF transistors and power-amplifier modules that meet and exceed the low-power design requirements of mobile-phone applications. Agilent claims that its new power-amplifier process will improve CDMA mobile-phone battery life by up to 15 percent, or allow for smaller batteries, which will make room for new features. The first product using this process, a high-dynamic-range transistor, is scheduled for introduction next month.

For more information: www.agilent.com

Last week, Motorola began shipping samples of its first DSP to use the SC140 core architecture developed by the StarCore Alliance (see "Cool cores"). The MSC8101 is built using the 0.13-micron copper interconnect process developed in Motorola's DigitalDNA laboratories. The DSP, which features an on-chip network interface, targets applications requiring large amounts of on-chip memory, as well as networking applications such as 3G infrastructure equipment, IP telephony systems, multi-channel modem banks, and multi-channel xDSL.

The MSC8101 combines a 300-MHz DSP core, a PowerPC interface, and Motorola's legacy CPM (communications processor module) technologies. The MSC8101 offers four ALUs (arithmetic logic units), a 150-MHz CPM programmable network protocol engine, 512 kbytes of on-chip SRAM, a 100-MHz (32- or 64-bit) PowerPC bus interface, and a programmable memory controller.

For more information: www.motorola-dsp.com

NTRU and Zucotto Wireless have partnered to deliver wireless security for embedded Java applications by porting NTRU's low-footprint security technology to Zucotto's Xpresso Java native processor. The two companies say that the resulting technology platform will allow users of next-generation wireless devices to perform secure m-commerce transactions involving field-level encryption, disposable keys, and frequent, mutual authentication using Java.

For more information: www.nrtu.com and www.zucotto.com

—Mark Long, News Correspondent