A Mixed Bag

Motorola has reportedly disabled EDGE capability on some of their high-end phones due to defective RFICs supplied by RFMD.

On one hand, it is impressive that RFMD is selling into Motorola chips that likely could be made by Freescale (Motorola's semiconductor spinoff company). Years ago, not only was Moto only buying Motorola-designed RFICs, but they saw their RFIC design and architecture as a major differentiator.

On the other hand, with Mot cellphone market share increasing (and Ed Zander doing a bang up job bringing the company around), it's not wise to promise and not deliver on RFMD's part. Then again, I'm sure that this publicity will be enough to right whatever is wrong down in North Carolina and RFMD will be shipping fully compliant devices as ordered shortly.

Zigbee's Not Perfect?

A new report by ARC Advisory Group suggests that Zigbee is not perfect for industrial markets. It does suggest that Zigbee, or at least 802.15.4 (the IEEE standards basis of Zigbee's PHY and MAC) is the best standard out there for industrial appplications, but falls short of the ideal.

From the release:

"The report urges manufacturers to explore extensions beyond ZigBee for more RF agility, edge devices with higher network reliability, and other advanced services that benefit industrial devices and systems."

As usual, the customer wants its cake and wants to eat it too. Certainly a standards-based solution will provide a multitude of hapless semiconductor companies falling all over themselves to win business and allows for a multi-vendor strategy assuring low pricing (Chipcon's new CC2430 single chip Zigbee family is already priced as low as $3.30 in volume prior to any production shipments.) and assurance of supply.

But as the feature wagon loads up, the customer wants to maintain the overall Bill of Materials. This will not happen, or at least it never happens to me when I go to a restaurant and decide to order dessert after the bill has arrived; they always charge me for extras.

SoC it to Zigbee

Chipcon has drawn first blood in the single-chip Zigbee wars. This small Norwegian company is besting RF powerhouses like Freescale in this space by focusing and delivering. It only remains to be seen if the market shows up on time for such a small player who is fully dependent on only a handful of products.

Based on my experience with the company, I would expect this trend of executing on plan to continue and that they will either be the CSR of the Zigbee world or be acquired by one of the broad-line semi suppliers, likely a European company such as STM, Philips, or Infineon, though the latter path could be impeded by Chipcon's inflated estimate of their street price.

WiMAX; A Better Cable?

WiNetworks unveiled their new WiMAX system at IBC this week.

The one big advantage of WiMAX for DBS operators is the (potentially symmetrical) upstream. This will allow for a more realistic "triple-play" story. But just how long will it be before you can get "cable TV" on your cellphone, PC, or any of a number of handheld devices? And will the content be brought to you by 3G, WiMAX, or DVB-H?

Let the turfwars begin!

This just in....

In the "so what's new" category, EETimes reports on a Frost and Sullivan report on RF semiconductors:

Semiconductor suppliers must use the latest technology and add functionality to their products but at the same time keep costs under check.

"RF semiconductor companies will have to design devices that improve the talk time, power characteristics, and overall performance of the RF section in handsets, and support high integration levels that enable the creation of single chip radios and integration of RF and baseband in the future. RF companies are under pressure to invest heavily in process technologies and design mechanisms that make it possible to develop such solutions," said Deepa Doraiswamy, an analyst for Frost & Sullivan.

Intensifying competition, higher customer expectations, and shorter design cycles will force semiconductor manufacturers to develop scalable solutions with advanced power control features and interfaces, the study said.


This has certainly been the case for the dozen or so years I've been in the wireless space and is only accellerating. I also find it interesting to refer to the RF semiconductor business in terms of only (I assume cellular) handsets. I forecast that unit volumes and revenues of non-core cellular RF semiconductors will easily eclipse cellphone chip sales towards the end of the decade.

Can you hear me now?

Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, governor of Louisiana is up in arms about the commercial wireless networks' failure to remain operational after hurricane Katrina.

Frankly, what does she expect from a commercial network? Are the TV networks up? How about the electric utilities? sewer systems? how about city water? Every one of these other systems are public utilities and SHOULD be functional shortly after disaster hits, but it would do her no good to rail about those, because she'd just be pointing out her own failures. Hey, I hate the cellphone company just as much as the next guy ("F*&^ing dropped my call AGAIN!) but this bit of bile is simply misdirected.

REAL Cellular Radio

Finally, an innovative use for cellphones!

KEXP 90.3FM in Seattle is now broadcasting MP3 live to smart cellphones. This is something that I believe can be big if users can afford it, and if the handset providers figure out a better way to get decent audio out of their products.

U Dubya B

Well, the OFDM camp in the UWB standards war claims another victory with Intel as its anchor (or maybe more appropriately, at the helm). Wisair is offering a 2 chip UWB PHY solution that they are claiming will work with the Wireless USB Forum's planned protocol. Did I mention that Intel is a key player in the WUSB forum?

Meanwhile, the U in UWB won't likely stand for UNIVERSAL. OFCOM, the UK's wireless watchdog is recommending that UWB not be allowed in the 3.4GHz band for fear of interference with, among other things, broadband fixed wireless access systems. I find this an interesting comment, especially in light of the extremely short range expected for UWB devices relative to BFWA systems like WiMAX (depending on whose definition of WiMAX you're using at the time).

In an effort to make it easier for me to provide news and commentary on the evanescent wireless world, I'm using BLOGGING tools. I am hoping that this will make it easy for me to quickly drop a link and/or a snippet of breaking news along with some useful insights or rumination on a fairly regular basis, and in turn, provide a place for clients, associates, friends, and even lookieloos to get a concentrated dose of wireless intelligence.

Wish me luck.......