It seems that cellular-phone manufacturers simply cannot afford the time, space, battery power, and costs involved in adding Bluetooth to their designs. To conquer these obstacles, Silicon Wave and RF Micro Devices have released the SiW3500 UltimateBlue IC. This single-chip CMOS Bluetooth solution should help speed time to market. It also implements features found in Bluetooth Specification Version 1.2: faster connecting times, Adaptive Frequency Hopping (AFH), and extended SCO.

The circuit combines a direct-conversion radio modem with an ARM7TDMI processor core, Bluetooth baseband logic, and complete protocol software in ROM. The direct-conversion architecture boasts superior receiver blocking performance. It is optimized for the RF environments within mobile phones. By enabling an open software-development platform, the 32-b ARM7TDMI core facilitates the integration of upper-layer stack and profiles.

The SiW3500 chip serves as a complete platform. It can execute additional upper-layer protocol-stack and application-software functions—including audio-processing algorithms like noise cancellation—without a separate DSP. In addition, the on-chip 50-Ω RF matching network requires no external-matching component to connect directly to an antenna.

The solution supports all standard mobile-phone reference-clock frequencies. To attain optimal performance, its hardware-based automatic-gain-control (AGC) circuit dynamically adjusts the receiver. The on-chip ROM storage has dynamic-software-patch capability. To reduce interference with IEEE 802.11 devices, the SiW3500 has built-in UltimateBlue Coexistence Technology. Lastly, the chip's temperature-compensation circuit acts to stabilize performance from −40° to +85°C. An extended high-temperature range is available as well.

The SiW3500 comes in a 96-pin 6-×-6-mm VFBGA package. A bumped-die option is available. Samples of the IC will be available from RF Micro Devices.

Silicon Wave, Inc.
6256 Greenwich Dr., Suite 400, San Diego, CA 92122; (858) 453-9100, FAX: (858) 453-3332, www.siliconwave.com.

RF Micro Devices
7628 Thorndike Rd., Greensboro, NC 27409-9421; (336) 664-1233, FAX: (336) 931-7454, www.rfmd.com.