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Skyworks Solutions Inc of Woburn, MA, USA has introduced a portfolio of energy management products the wireless home. High-volume samples are now, with full-scale production scheduled for fiscal third-quarter 2008. The firm’s Linear Products business has already captured several key design wins with market leaders for automated meter reading (AMR), advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4).

Skyworks says that multiple customer’s mesh network solutions are going into volume production using its tested technology that includes front-end modules (FEMs), power amplifiers (PAs) and drivers, switches, voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs), phase-lock loops (PLLs), diodes, and other key building block components.

“Our Linear Products’ business continues to gain traction in the increasingly dynamic energy market,” says Stan Swearingen Jr, VP and general manager of Linear Products. Skyworks has uniquely tailored its portfolio of discrete and highly integrated front-end solutions to support a range of remote metering emerging applications, he adds.

According to ABS Energy Research, there are about 2.5 billion electric, gas and water meters in the world, of which only 6% are automated. As a result, there is pent-up demand for an economic RF solution to more efficiently collect, report and monitor utility usage by both service providers and consumers. Accordingly, Skyworks has shipped product into more than 2 million meters to date.

Skyworks has prioritized energy management, and the firm claims that its suite of RF solutions is gaining traction at key utilities worldwide (e.g. recently starting volume production in support of one of North America’s largest electricity providers, with more highly integrated RF solutions on the horizon).

The firm says that its custom AMR FEMs allow significant size and cost reduction. In addition, many are designed to allow for ‘plug-and-play’ functionality, reducing design time for new products. Customized FEMs can be created depending on transceiver implementation requirements. Various modules are being targeted at 450, 900 and 2400MHz frequency bands. Integration possibilities include PAs, transmit/receive (T/R) switches, low noise amplifiers (LNAs), harmonic filters, and mixers.

*Skyworks is showcasing solutions from its Linear Products’ portfolio at this week’s IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2008) in Atlanta, GA, USA (15-20 June).

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Visit: www.skyworksinc.com