Sony, Tokyo Tech prep 6.3Gbps ultra wideband wireless
updated 01:50 pm EST, Mon February 20, 2012
Sony and Tokyo Tech make LSIs for mobile chips
Sony and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have just announced they have developed low-power radio frequency and baseband Large Scale Integration (LSI) circuits for mobile devices. The millimeter-wave, 60GHz communications devices have reached the world's highest transfer rates of 6.3Gbps in tests; it can transfer 50GB in over a minute. The technology is meant for sending data between devices in short hops, such as wirelessly streaming high-quality video to a display from a smartphone.
The two split the project, with Sony designing the baseband LSI and developing the whole chip unit, while the Institute designed and RF LSI and analog parts of the broadband LSI.
The analog-to-digital converter (ADC) on the baseband LSI is said to have the lowest power consumption in the world, at 12mW when sampling at 2.3 G per second. At their maximum, the chips use 74mW of energy. The 60GHz millimeter wave band is used for both Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) and WirelessHD (WiHD) and could theoretically see the 6.3Gbps technology brought to either.
When the first devices ship with the new jointly-developed chips remains to be seen.
