Skyworks Develops Smallest Complete EDGE Radio

Cannes, France -- 3GSM World Congress -- Skyworks Solutions, Inc. today released what it claims is the world's smallest complete dual-chip radio subsystem for E-GPRS (GSM/GPRS/EDGE) mobile platforms. By combining the company's single-chip direct conversion transceiver with a power amplifier containing an integrated PA controller (PA/PAC), Skyworks has significantly cut space requirements for EDGE radio circuitry while improving performance, accelerating design cycle times, and reducing costs.

Helios Mini is a complete radio solution for GSM, GPRS, and EDGE mobile handset applications that builds on the advantages of Skyworks' earlier three-chip version. It features the company's patent-pending Polar Loop transmit modulation technology, enabling the radio to transmit both constant as well as non-constant envelope signals through the same transmit path. This approach minimizes the number of external components that are required, and improves talk times by as much as 10% by increasing PA efficiency in EDGE mode as compared to conventional architectures. Helios Mini also includes the company's latest single-chip direct conversion transceiver, which works with the subsystem's PA/PAC to create a seamless closed-loop transmit system.

"Following on the success of our innovative, first generation solution, Helios Mini takes EDGE radio integration to an unprecedented level," said Kevin Barber, senior VP of RF solutions at Skyworks. "With an ever-increasing number of handsets embedding advanced multimedia feature sets, radio footprint, power efficiency, design flexibility and overall cost are paramount considerations. Helios Mini meets demanding customer needs, while accelerating time-to-market."

The Helios family showcases Skyworks' unique ability to pair field-proven front-end module technology with radio functionality, and can be used to develop handsets with advanced features of varying complexity such as color displays, integrated digital cameras, Web browsing and multimedia messaging services (MMS).

Technical cetails
The Helios Polar Loop solution condenses all required EDGE RF subsystem functionality into two compact devices:

• SKY74945 Direct Conversion Transceiver
  Based on Skyworks' industry-leading single-chip technology, the SKY74945 consists of a direct conversion receiver, a transmitter with a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO), and a fully integrated fractional-N synthesizer.

• SKY77332 PA/PAC
  Skyworks has incorporated a GSM850/900 block, a DCS1800/PCS1900 PA block, impedance-matching circuitry for 50-ohm input and output, an integrated coupler, a downconverter and a PA control block into a single 56-pin, 8mm-by-8mm-by-1mm RFLGA package. Integrated noise filtering eliminates the need for pre-PA filters, and the PA inside the control loop provides excellent error vector magnitude (EVM) and phase error performance with up to 6:1 voltage standing wave radio (VSWR) without the need for an external isolator.

Availability
Helios Mini is sampling now. Volume production is scheduled to commence in the third quarter of 2005.

Skyworks at 3GSM World Congress
Skyworks will be showcasing its GPRS, EDGE and WCDMA portfolio at Stand D27, Hall 2 at the 3GSM World Congress, being held Feb. 14-17 in Cannes.

Source: Skyworks