Si4905 AeroFONE Single-Chip Phone Solution

Wins EDNChina Innovation Award

Silicon Labs has won the Leading Product award in EDN China's 2006 Innovation Award in the category of Network & Communication.

EDN Innovation Award is one of the most prestigio-us awards introduced in the United States 16 years ago for the semiconductor industry. EDN China – the premier publication for China's electronics desi-gn community - introduced the award to the country for the second time thisyear and there has been exte-nsive response to it among our 35,000 readers – the elite of China's electronics engineering community.

The introduction of Si4905AeroFONE Single-Chip Phone Solution:

To support the demands of the fast-growing cellular handset market, the industry has pushed for a single-chip phone that offers the ultimate in integration and cost without sacrificing performance. A single-chip phone must integrate the sensitive RF circuitry with noisy digital circuits on a single monolithic IC. The key issue is managing the digital interference of digital subsystems operating at high frequencies while integrat-ing sensitive, small signal RF circuits with high-speed digital baseband subsystems.

Silicon Laboratories overcame these difficult design challenges with the AeroFONE™ single-chip phone, the industry's first fully-integrated single-chip phone for GSM/GPRS handsets. The AeroFONE approach to the single-chip cell phone differs markedly from the competition. While other single-chip solutions inte-grate the digital baseband, analog baseband and RF transceiver, the Si4905 is the first to also integrate the power management unit (PMU) and the battery interface and charging circuitry, all in a single monolithic IC. The Si4905 integrates both of these high voltage subsystems in a 0.13 mm standard CMOS versus competing solutions which require multiple die, external ICs and several supporting external passive components.

The level of integration that the Si4905 dramatically lowers the cost of developing a handset. By reducing the number of components from 250 to fewer than 60 to build a complete quad-band handset, handset manufacturers can reduce manufacturing costs by more than 50 percent. Additionally, the AeroFONE single-chip phone provides the highest level of performance. The Si4905 outperforms competing soluti-ons on key RF performance metrics. In the two most key specifications, receive sensitivity and transmit 400 kHz spectral mask, the AeroFONE solution exceeds the competition by 2 to 4 dB.

As the first fully functional and completely integrated single-chip phone, the Si4905 AeroFONE solution is a breakthrough innovation generations ahead of any current product offering due to its superior integration, software flexibility and unmatched quality and performance. Silicon Laboratories has filed approximately 40 patents to protect the fundamental core technology for the AeroFONE single-chip phone.