CSEM Introduces a Low Power RF SoC with an Integrated DSP Processor Back

CSEM has developed a unique System-on-Chip (SoC) tailored for portable wireless communication products, including an integrated DSP processor and optimized power management to maximize battery life.

Embedded wireless systems such as wireless sensor networks (WSN) and body area networks (BAN) require miniaturized integrated solutions with minimized energy consumption for maximum autonomy with reduced-size batteries. While battery life is partly driven by the radio transmission, it is also highly dependent on sensor data acquisition and associated local processing.

Efficient local digital signal processing (DSP) would allow compression of the sensor information and thereby reduction of the energy consumption associated to the transmission of the resulting information. Unfortunately the RF SoCs available today do not have the required computing power, while external DSPs are not optimized for ultra-low power consumption.

CSEM has developed an RF system-on-chip (SoC) integrating a 900M Hz low power RF transceiver, a 32-bit 150 µA/MHz dual-MAC DSP RISC core with 96 kibytes of SRAM. Named “icycom,” the SoC runs off a 1V supply, compatible with a single alkaline cell, and is optimized for long battery life, consuming 3.5 mA in receiving active mode, 40 mA for 10 dBm transmission and 1.1 µA in standby with RTC running. Additional peripherals such as a voltage-divider to also address lithium batteries, ADC, SPI, I2C, UART, I2S, etc, are all included on the same chip, resulting in a compact system solution.

The icycom SoC opens up the way to ultra-compact, autonomous wireless systems such as WSN, BAN and others. Samples and development kits are available.

CSEM will present their results at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco in February.