Reference design shrinks wireless networking

Intersil has released the industry's smallest wireless reference design.

Intersil has released the industry's smallest wireless reference design.

The new smaller design provides all the integrated circuits, software, firmware and a companion voltage-controlled oscillator to give systems manufacturers a highly integrated, and complete solution for designing 802.11b-compliant wireless networking capability into small, handheld devices.

Featuring a USB 1.1 interface and based on Intersil's PRISM 2.5 chipset, the new reference design speeds up the development of smaller wireless enabled products that provide access to networks and the Internet for fast and efficient transmission of data, video and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services.

The ISL37300U reference design allows a complete WLAN adapter to be provided on a small mini-USB card measuring approximately 2.3 x 1.5in, ideal for small form factor applications including embedded and external USB based applications.

Using the PRISM 2.5 chipset's integrated ISL3873 BBP/MAC, the design makes it easy for OEMs to add embedded wireless LAN capability to products that connect to the host device using a USB connection.

The solution delivers full 11Mbit/s datarates and fully complies with the IEEE 802.11b standard, allowing manufactures to achieve Wi-Fi certification.

The reference design also includes the world's first integrated single-chip baseband processor (BBP) and medium access controller (MAC) to reduce the chip count.

The new PRISM 2.5 Reference Design comes with all manufacturing data and necessary software.

The contents include system schematics, board layout, Gerber files, bill-of-materials lists, software, firmware and documentation.

For customers who use the reference design with minimum changes, system design effort and time-to-market can be reduced by up to 80 percent.

The new reference design is compatible with Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4.0 and Millennium operating systems.

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