Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Japanese Leading Manufacturers: Hitachi, Panasonic & Toshiba All First in Millimeter-Wave Communication Chips!
Hitachi, Panasonic & Toshiba announced recently their latest development of radio frequency (RF) transceiver ICs in the 60GHz band. All three leading Japanese manufactures intend to create ultra-small transceiver units that have integrated antennas. This new technology is designed for use in digital home electronics.
With a bandwidth of only 7GHz and utilizing a 60GHz radio frequency spectrum it will enable a transfer rate of 1.5 Gigabits per second. This is a much faster transfer speed compared to 802.11g of 54Mbs meaning to download a 640MB CD will take merely about 5 seconds or for a 2-hour SD quality video about 9 seconds.
The New Millimeter-Wave Transceiver Units:
1. Hitachi Integrates LNA, Mixer, VCO, etc
2. Panasonic's Millimeter-Wave Transceiver Module
3. Toshiba's Single-Chip RF Transceiver
This technology has been an unknown market commodity which is why it’s a new project development. With market growth expected to rise, the likes of Panasonic, LG Electronics and other companies released AV equipment with WirelessHD standard utilizing SiBEAM chipsets.
1. Hitachi: Their intent is to make use of millimeter-wave communication in large screen TVs, Blu-ray Disc Recorders and other home entertainment products for the transfer of high-definition video streams between AV equipment. A prototype CMOS receiver IC has been designed by Hitachi with module combination of the IC, an antenna and additional components to support data communication with 802.15.3c compliance. This device was manufactured using 130nm CMOS technology with a VCO (voltage-controlled oscillator) integration, mixer & low-noise amplifier (LNO).
2. Panasonic: Their focus is on applications in mobile phones; hoping to single-chip the entire package using CMOS technology.
Toshiba: the plan for Toshiba is use millimeter-wave communication to construct completely cordless digital equipment. They are working on an RF transceiver IC which utilizes semiconducting chip bonding wires as the actual antenna. A single-chip solution using CMOS technology without the need for a dedicated antenna or any extra components is their much hoped for plan.
Keep an eye out at POSMarket as the initial millimeter-wave communication products may appear as soon as mid 2010! How exciting is that!