Philips and Atheros accelerate convergence
Published: 15 April, 2005
The Philips Nexperia Cellular System Solution 6120 design features the company's extremely low-power 802.11g system-in-a-package (SiP) for connections to Wi-Fi access points. In this regard, Philips has made a significant advancement. A concern with WLAN and cellular integration has always been the toll which the notoriously power-hungry 802.11 transmission would have on the battery life of the device. However, Philips claims that its integrated platform actually shows better performance than a pure GSM device. This is down to the level of power optimisation that the company has managed to squeeze into its 802.11g chip. It is also a result of the UMA standard's ability to hibernate the cellular radio if communication is taking place over Wi-Fi. The only time when lower power performance might be expected is if the device is only exposed to GSM coverage, and the Wi-Fi radio must awake intermittently to check for the availability of Wi-Fi coverage.
Philips was one of the early entrants into the WLAN semiconductor market and early Centrino notebooks actually contained Philips' 802.11b chipsets because Intel was unable to ready its Wi-Fi silicon in time for the Centrino launch.
Philips is also one of the world's leading makers of handset ICs and complete handset reference design platforms - a position it keeps company with the likes of Texas Instruments (the market leader), Skyworks, Infineon, Agere and Broadcom. Customers using Philips handset platforms include Samsung, Siemens and SonyEricsson.
Examples of Philips handset platform customers |
| Samsung |
| Siemens |
| SonyEricsson |
| Ningbo Bird |
| DBTel |
| Harier |
| Centel |
