Miniaturization Trends in Wireless

　　Miniaturization Trends in Wireless

　　本文着眼于不同的趋势，减少无线系统的大小和功耗的例子，从德克萨斯仪器，赫和石灰微系统。从数字基带到高度集成的RF CMOS技术和新材料，以减少功率放大器和无线功率器件的大小，在无线小型化的驱动有许多复杂的工程权衡。组件设计也起着关键的趋势，与可重构无线设备集成更多的系统组件，以减少系统板的整体尺寸。

　　不断增长的连接世界的需求正在推动无线系统变得越来越小。能够适应无线链接到牙刷，甚至是一对骰子，是越来越多的移动到物联网（物联网）和空间的一部分，是一个关键的设计标准。然而，有许多不同的优化在无线系统中的小型化。短距离，低功耗无线收发器受益于CMOS制造技术与晶圆代工供应商，包括积极进取的过程节点28纳米和20纳米射频库的缩放。这些过程允许收发器，在2.4 GHz的Wi-Fi或蓝牙，被集成在相同的芯片作为基带MAC协议处理器，因此提供高性能的无线链路在几平方毫米。

　　For example， the CC3100 from Texas Instruments is a Wi-Fi network processor subsystem in a 9 x 9 mm QFN package. Alongside a dedicated ARM MCU that completely offloads the host MCU， the device includes an 802.11 b/g/n radio， baseband， and MAC with a crypto engine for fast， secure Internet connections with 256-bit encryption. All this reduces the footprint of a Wi-Fi node for the IoT， and the CC3100 supports Station， Access Point and Wi-Fi Direct modes along with embedded TCP/IP and TLS/SSL stacks， HTTP server and multiple Internet protocols.

　　The miniaturization is enhanced with an integrated power management subsystem that includes integrated DC-DC converters supporting a wide range of supply voltages. This enables low-power consumption modes， such as ‘the hibernate’ with RTC mode requiring about 4 µA of current and also removes the need for external power management devices that occupy additional board space.

　　The CC3100 device can connect to any 8， 16， or 32-bit MCU over the SPI or UART Interface and the device driver minimizes the host memory footprint requirements requiring less than 7 KB of code memory and just 700 bytes of RAM for a TCP client application， reducing the need for external memory.