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Chip cuts WiFi standby power to "near-zero"
Oct. 30, 2007

Atheros has announced a new "game-changing" WiFi chip said to cut power consumption drastically on mobile devices. The Atheros AR6002 draws "near-zero" power when in standby, and 70 percent less power than previous WiFi technologies even when active, the company claims.

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The single-chip AR6002 "Radio on Chip for Mobile" (ROCm) platform is said to be software-compatible with the company's prior AR6001. This would mean, among other things, compatibility with the shared source Windows CE driver that has been developed by a community project on Microsoft's Codeplex website.

Claiming to have "eliminated the power consumption challenge," Atheros says its AR6002 chip will take more than 100 hours to deplete a standard 3.7V, 800mAh phone battery in continual VoIP mode. In another application using the AR6002, 200 gigabytes of data could be downloaded before depleting the same battery, the company adds.

In addition, the company claims that users of devices incorporating this chip won't need to switch the WiFi functionality on and off, since standby power consumption is infinitesimal.

Atheros said the AR6002 will provide product designers with quick time-to-market, thanks to its "pre-qualified ROCm software features." The company cites pre-installed driver support for Windows CE 6.0, plus a long-standing relationship with Qualcomm.

The AR6002 also implements industry-standard, 2-, 3-, and 4-wire protocols for WiFi/Bluetooth coexistence in mobile devices, according to Atheros. Advanced algorithms in the AR6002 are said to modify the WLAN communication behavior automatically when in the presence of Bluetooth devices.

Hardware-based, full-speed security supports the WPA, WPA2 and 802.11i standards. Additionally, the AR6002 offers "rich" support for voice and video through polled QoS extensions (802.11e and WMM), the company says.

The AR6002 is available in single 802.11g (2.4GHz) and dual-band 802.11a/g (5/2.4 GHz) options, housed in either chip scale packages (CSPs) or ball grid arrays (BGAs). In addition to the WiFi radio and control logic, a power amplifier, low noise amplifier, and RF switch are all said to be resident on the chip.

Atheros says it offers full driver support for Windows CE, Windows Mobile, and Linux.

Availability

The AR6002 is currently sampling, and is expected to reach volume production in the first quarter of 2008. Pricing was not disclosed.



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