RFaxis has announced additional products to its expanding portfolio of RF front-end integrated circuit (RFeIC™) solutions for the global IoT / M2M (machine-to-machine) market. The new products expand their family of RF front-end ICs for the sub-GHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands commonly used for range extension in many classes of wireless communication systems for IoT.
The RFX2403 is integrated with a high-efficiency power amplifier (PA), low noise amplifier (LNA) with bypass, and Transmit/Receive switching circuitry for 802.15.4 ZigBee/Thread, proprietary ISM radios in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, while also supporting linear modulations such as Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE). It is pin-to-pin compatible to the widely used RFaxis 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.
The RFX2413 is integrated with a high-efficiency PA, and antenna diversity switch, and a power detector circuitry, also for the 2.4 GHz band. With a low bypass insertion loss, it is ideal for wireless IoT systems with transceivers which already have low noise figure, with the added benefit of barely any current draw during Receive mode. The RFX1030 is 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 3x3mm QFN packages. All FEM's 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 available Q1, 2016.
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 becomes 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 (Machina Research, May 2015).
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. RFaxis is well positioned to support this emerging market with its family of innovative, single-die, single-chip CMOS RF front-end products. They will be showcasing the these high performance, cost-effective RFeIC™ solutions for IoT at the 2016 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada, from January 6-9, 2016.
