Baseband engine helps single-chip phones to market

TTPCom has entered into a partnership with Silicon Laboratories to support the recently launched Aerofone single chip cellular platform.

TTPCom has entered into a partnership with Silicon Laboratories to support the recently launched Aerofone single chip cellular platform.

Silicon Laboratories has licensed the TTPCom Cellular Baseband Engine (CBE) family of products including silicon intellectual property (IP), GSM/GPRS protocol software and applications.

TTPCom's CBE family of products enables semiconductor manufacturers to achieve a unique combination of design flexibility and time to market.

They have been proven and validated in many millions of chipsets and are designed to reduce semiconductor vendors' product development costs whilst enabling them to build in their own features to create highly differentiated products.

Silicon Labs' adoption of CBE means that handset manufacturers implementing the Aerofone will benefit from compatibility with TTPCom's Ajar applications framework, and "designed-in" compatibility with TTPCom's protocol software.

This will enable them to reuse existing software infrastructure and expertise to significantly reduce system cost, and to achieve rapid time to market for new handsets.

The Aerofone single chip phone integrates the digital and analogue baseband, quad band transceiver, power management unit and battery charging circuitry for a GSM/GPRS class 12 cellular phone in a monolithic CMOS IC.

The Aerofone platform brings together Silicon Laboratories' skill in delivering high-performance highly integrated mixed-signal semiconductor devices with TTPCom's systems expertise in silicon IP and protocol software.

The result is a cost effective and easy to use platform for entry level to feature phone GSM/GPRS handsets.

Julian Hildersley, Managing Director of TTPCom's Silicon Business Unit commented: "Developing and maintaining a modem is a very complex task".

"However, by implementing our CBE silicon IP, Silicon Laboratories has been able to take advantage of the many years of development that have gone into creating our technology to develop a highly competitive product in a very short time".

"Silicon Laboratories' unprecedented level of integration of cellular functions, coupled with TTPCom's GSM/GPRS protocol stack and Ajar applications platform, provides a compelling, differentiated and high quality solution for handset developers", said Dan Rabinovitsj, Vice President of Silicon Laboratories.

The Aerofone single chip phone is currently sampling to customers.

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