Fabless semiconductor firm RFaxis Inc of Irvine, CA, USA, which designs RF semiconductors and embedded antenna solutions for wireless connectivity and cellular mobility, has launched a new family of ultra-miniature 2.4GHz RF front-end IC (RFeIC) products for the high-growth Internet of Things (IoT)/M2M (machine-to-machine) market. The RFX25xx-series of products further expands RFaxis' portfolio of RF front-end ICs for the 2.4GHz frequency band that are widely adopted by wireless communication systems for IoT.
The RFX25xx-series is a family of 2.4GHz RFeICs in an ultra-miniature 2.5mm x 2.5mm QFN package (a smaller size option to the existing RFX24xx-series of products). These product families are intended for use in the 2.4GHz spectrum for 802.15.4 ZigBee/Thread, RF4CE, 6LoPAN, ANT and proprietary ISM modulations, while also supporting linear modulations such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), 802.15.4g Smart Utility Network (SUN), and low-power Wi-Fi. They cover a wide array of IoT applications for smart home, smart office, smart building, smart utility, and low-power wide-area networking (LP-WAN), both on the sensor node side and the gateway side.
The RFX25xx-series consists of the RFX2501, RFX2502, RFX2503, RFX2510, RFX2511 and RFX2513. The RFX2501 comes integrated with a high-efficiency power amplifier (PA), low-noise amplifier (LNA), and Transmit/Receive switching circuitry. Similarly, the RFX2502 comes integrated with a high-efficiency, higher saturated and linear power output PA, LNA, Transmit/Receive switch, and directional power detector circuitries.
The RFX2503 comes integrated with a high-efficiency PA, LNA with added bypass mode, Transmit/Receive switch, and directional power detector circuitries. The RFX2510 is similar and comes integrated with a high-efficiency PA, Transmit/Receive switch with bypass mode, and directional power detector circuitries. It is suitable for wireless IoT systems with transceivers that already have low noise figure, with the added benefit of very minimal current consumption during Receive mode.
For antenna diversity applications, the RFX2511 features a high-efficiency PA, LNA with bypass mode, Transmit/Receive switch, double-pole, double-throw (DPDT) antenna switch for diversity, and directional power detector circuitries. Its derivative product is the RFX2513, which comes with a high-efficiency PA, Transmit/Receive switch with bypass mode, DPDT antenna switch for diversity, and directional power detector circuitries.
The product family comes with different sets of features that allow users to upgrade their wireless IoT systems with extended range, increased tolerance to antenna impedance variations, improved link reliability through antenna diversity, and improved coexistence performance with adjacent radios through LNA bypass. All come with associated matching networks, RF decoupling and harmonic filters, in a single-die, single-chip, and bulk CMOS device in miniature 3mm x 3mm QFN packages. All are also available in bare die form for ultra-compact designs such as system-in-package (SIP) modules. All are rated up to 125°C ambient temperature required by most applications such as smart lighting.
As wireless connectivity for IoT and M2M continues to evolve, the need for high-performance, yet simple and cost-effective RF front-end solutions becomes more critical than ever, says RFaxis. 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).
"RFaxis is committed to offer a wide breadth of products to the IoT market to enable ultra-compact, high-performance and cost-competitive designs," says RFaxis' chief technical officer Oleksandr Gorbachov. "This latest release of the RFX25xx family addresses our customers' demand for the fast-growing IoT and M2M segments," he adds. "As devices for the smart home, smart office, smart utility and use cases continue to develop and expand, RFaxis is well-positioned to offer a variety of products through this added family of innovative, single-die, single-chip RF front-end ICs in pure CMOS."
RFaxis is showcasing its new family of ultra miniature RFeIC solutions for IoT at the 2016 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain (22-25 February) as well as at Embedded World 2016 in Nuremberg, Germany (23-25 February).
