Three-chip solution enables Edge on PC cards

A quad-band Edge RF system solution from Renesas Technology is being used by Sierra Wireless in its new Edge wireless wide area network cards, including the AirCard 775.

A quad-band Edge RF system solution from Renesas Technology is being used by Sierra Wireless in its new Edge wireless wide area network cards, including the AirCard 775 and privately labelled Edge PC cards.

The Sierra Wireless PC card product line is the first commercial deployment of the RF solution, which was developed with Renesas Technology's long-term technology partner TTPCom.

The fully compliant RF system comprises just three major components and simplifies the implementation of Edge.

The Sierra Wireless AirCard 775 is an Edge multi-slot Class 12 wireless wide area network card that offers data rates up to three times faster than those available on GPRS networks.

The AirCard 775 uses TTPCom's protocol stack software and offers average data speeds between 100 and 130Kbit/s, with bursts up to 216Kbit/s.

The quad-band design (850/900/1800/1900MHz) enables global roaming on both Edge and GSM/GPRS networks.

"This is the first of a number of design wins for our Edge RF solution".

"We will have many more customers going to mass production over the next six months", said Yutaka Tanaka, Department Manager, Mobile Product Marketing Dept, System Solution Business Group of Renesas Technology Corp.

"Our RF subsystem is a working product that is ready now".

"It offers handset manufacturers a stable, advanced and easy route to Edge RF".

Julian Hildersley, Managing Director of TTPCom's Silicon Business Unit commented: "Edge terminals will need to fully support the next generation of applications such as streaming video and audio, and this puts tremendous pressure on the radio chipset which has to maintain a consistent level of signal quality".

"To accomplish this we worked closely with Renesas Technology to develop and test a high quality RF system solution that utilises innovative polar loop modulation technology".

He added: "At TTPCom we are immensely proud that some of the first Edge products to be launched in the market are using our radio technology as well as our baseband designs, protocol and application software - this really does demonstrate our complete systems expertise".

Jim Kirkpatrick, Chief Technical Officer for Sierra Wireless commented: "For our first Edge product we required a radio solution that provided both high bandwidth and high quality cellular coverage".

"We felt that this level of quality would only be achievable with highly integrated polar loop modulation technology".

"We have a long standing relationship with both TTPCom and Renesas Technology and with Renesas' Edge RF we are confident that the Aircard 775 will provide the same world-leading user experience that our customers have become accustomed to".

The highly integrated subsystem offers a complete quad-band Edge RF solution that is already proven with many different basebands.

The solution makes it easy for a manufacturer to implement Edge RF by automatically resolving some of the difficult technical issues, such as power control and managing TX noise.

The system comprises power amplifier, RFIC (including direct conversion receiver and polar loop transmitter) and SAW front-end module.

All VCOs, the antenna switch, front-end filtering and power control are fully integrated.

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