Sunday, June 15, 2008

Low power wlan devices

Who makes WLAN chips that go into cell-phone/smart-phone? A search leads to some information:

1) Atheros AR6002 (Oct 2007)
- 70 percent less power than competitive solutions on the market in active mode while downloading content
* 100 hours to deplete a standard 3.7V, 800mAh phone battery in continual VoIP mode
*
200 gigabytes of data can be downloaded before depleting the same battery
- Near-Zero Power in Standby (6 µW)
http://www.atheros.com/news/AR6002.htm

2) Broadcom BCM4326 (Oct 2006)
- single-chip 802.11Wi-Fi transceivers and radios with an innovative software architecture that drastically reduces the Wi-Fi subsystem's total power consumption
- exceptional power performance that enables a 54Mbps full-rate active receive power consumption of less than 270 mW
- system battery life enhanced through combination of complete on-chip driver control and other sophisticated software capabilities
http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=919562

3) ST Microelectonics STLC4550 (Apr 2006)
- 30µW sleep mode
http://www.stmicroelectronic.com/stonline/stappl/cms/press/news/year2006/p2020.htm


Comments:
As the deployment of WiFi increases, it will be adopted in more mobile devices to enable better coverage and also different business models and applications. As a result, I would think
a) the market for wifi chips will grow (and maybe follow the trend of cellphone chips)
b) the winner will likely be the low-energy candidate (assuming all other things are equal)


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