VR-Zone

One feature where smartphones and tablets are generally lagging behind notebooks is in Wi-Fi connectivity, as most devices are stuck at speeds of around 65Mbps. This is because of various limitations of the Wi-Fi chips used, but now Broadcom seems to have a couple of solutions that should remedy this, while being cost effective.

Broadcom has announced two new Wi-Fi chips for mobile devices manufactured at 40nm, although beyond Wi-Fi they also include Bluetooth 4.0 + HS and an FM radio. The first model which is targeting tablets is called the BCM43241 and offers dual-band 802.11n 2x2 MIMO connectivity and Broadcom claims that it offers up to 70 percent greater range than single stream solutions and speeds of up to 300Mbps when using 40MHz channel width. It sports integrated RF power amplifiers (this is usually done by external chips) to help reduce BOM cost and PCB space taken up. Broadcom also claims that this is the first chip to combine MIMO Wi-Fi with Bluetooth 4.0 and FM radio on a single chip.

The second chip is the BCM4334 which is said to be a power efficient solution for smartphones that incorporates off-loading of audio processing, or in other words, the BCM4334 handles audio playback and allows the main SoC to go into sleep mode to help save power. It also features dual-band Wi-Fi, although only single stream technology this time around, but unlike most Wi-Fi solutions for smartphones we're looking at support for 40MHz channels and as suck speeds of up to 150Mbps. The Bluetooth 4.0 + HS and FM radios have apparently also been designed specifically to draw less power in this chip.

Both solutions are currently sampling to Broadcom's partners, although full production won't kick off until Q3 which means these chips aren't likely to end up in devices until the end of the year.

Source: Broadcom