5 January 2016

RFaxis expands portfolio of CMOS RF front-end ICs for Internet of Things applications

Fabless semiconductor firm RFaxis Inc of Irvine, CA, USA, which designs RF semiconductors and embedded antenna solutions for wireless connectivity and cellular mobility, has added new products to its expanding portfolio of RF front-end integrated circuit (RFeIC) solutions for the global Internet of Things (IoT)/M2M (machine-to-machine) market. The new products further expand RFaxis' family of RF front-end ICs for the sub-GHz and 2.4GHz frequency bands commonly used for range extension in many classes of wireless communication systems for IoT.

The latest additions to the firm's IoT portfolio are the RFX2403, RFX2413 and RFX1030 RFeICs. The RFX2403 comes integrated with a high-efficiency power amplifier (PA), low-noise amplifier (LNA) with bypass, and Transmit/Receive (T/R) switching circuitry for 802.15.4 ZigBee/Thread, proprietary ISM radios in the 2.4GHz spectrum, while also supporting linear modulations such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). It is pin-to-pin compatible to the widely used RFX2401C with added bypass mode and directional-coupler-based output power detector circuitry, allowing users to upgrade their wireless systems with features such as extended range, lower power consumption for long battery life, increased tolerance to antenna impedance variations, and improved coexistence performance with adjacent radios.

Similarly, the RFX2413 comes integrated with a high-efficiency PA and antenna diversity switch, and a power detector circuitry, also for the 2.4GHz band. With a low bypass insertion loss, the RFX2413 is suitable for wireless IoT systems with transceivers that already have low noise figure, with the added benefit of barely any current draw during Receive mode.

The RFX1030 comes integrated with a 1 Watt high-power, high-efficiency PA, LNA, and Transmit/Receive switching circuitry, and a directional power detector circuitry intended for the sub-GHz 802.15.14 and proprietary ISM radio topologies such as LoRa, SigFox and Weightless, and Narrowband Cellular IoT (NB-CIoT).

All three new products come with associated matching networks, RF decoupling and harmonic filters, in single-die, single-chip, bulk CMOS device in miniature 3mm x 3mm QFN packages. All are rated up to 125°C ambient temperature, required by most applications especially for smart LED lighting, smart home, smart office, and smart building. Samples will be made available during first-quarter 2016.

RFaxis says that, as wireless connectivity for IoT and M2M continues to evolve from smart energy to the smart home, smart office, smart building, smart city and recently also to low-power wide-area networking (LP-WAN), the need for simple high-performance yet cost-effective RF front-end solutions is becoming more critical than ever. The total IoT/M2M wireless connectivity market for fixed, short-range radios as well as LP-WAN is estimated to be 20 billion connected devices by 2025 (according to Machina Research in May 2015).

"Our latest product release for IoT addresses our customers' demand for increased performance and reliability of 2.4GHz and sub-GHz wireless networks," says RFaxis' chief technical officer Oleksandr Gorbachov. "As deployments for IoT services become a key driver for growth in the wireless connectivity space, the RF front-end for such radios needs to keep up with the demand for cost and performance," he adds. "RFaxis is well positioned to support this emerging market with its family of innovative, single-die, single-chip CMOS RF front-end products."

RFaxis is showcasing its expanding portfolio of RFeICs for IoT at the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada (6-9 January).

Tags: RFaxis CMOS

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