News

27 December 2006

 

Skyworks launches Helios II-Plus EDGE Radio for quad-band, multimedia handsets

Skyworks Solutions Inc of Woburn, MA, USA is sampling its Helios II-Plus EDGE radio, for volume production from Q1/2007. The firm claims that its high level of integration and robust performance is suited to next-generation quad-band handsets incorporating advanced multimedia features such as DVB-H, FM radios, MP3 players, digital cameras, and web browsing.

Compared to the previous Helios design, RF board space is reduced by a further 25%. Skyworks' radio solution also interfaces with virtually any analog baseband and simplifies factory calibration, allowing OEMs to increase production throughput, the company claims. In addition, Helios II-Plus surpasses GSM and EDGE specifications under real-world conditions such as extreme temperature, low-battery voltage and antenna mismatch, it adds. It also enables increased user talk-times by exceeding transmitted radiated power (TRP) specifications for improved current consumption.

Helios II-Plus condenses EDGE RF functionality into two compact devices: 

*The SKY74138 RF transceiver is a highly integrated device for multi-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE applications. The receive path implements Skyworks' direct conversion architecture, consisting of four integrated low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), a quadrature demodulator and selectable baseband filter. Similar to its predecessors, the transmitter path uses Skyworks' closed Polar Loop EDGE architecture, enabling it to be combined with virtually any standard GSM/EGPRS baseband without requiring any special processing interfaces.

*The SKY77523 is a transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) front-end module (FEM) with integrated coupler for quad-band GSM and EDGE applications. Also, a CMOS IC provides the internal PAC function, interface circuitry, and decoder circuitry to control the RF switches.

Together, feedback signals from the SKY74138 and SKY77523 form an integral part of the Polar Loop transmit architecture, which automatically adjusts amplitude and phase, providing very robust performances of the radio system, and not relying on blind corrections of the power amplifier (PA) process variation like other EDGE transmit
architectures.

Visit: http://www.skyworksinc.com