As interest in 60GHz technology for fast home video networks heats up, IBM and MediaTek are to show off the first fruits of their 2.5-year project in this area. The two firms will demonstrate their jointly created 60GHz transceiver chipset at this week’s IEEE RFIC Symposium in California, just as key standards bodies vie to provide the platform for future wireless HD video nets.
IBM and its partner ‘ best known for low cost cellphone chips but expanding rapidly into higher value areas ‘ have already shown off a transmitter and the combined chipset should be available commercially early next year. According to EETimes, their particular contribution is to offset the inability of 60GHz signals to penetrate walls or objects. They have ‘downsized military phased-array radar technologies to a single chip’ to allow the signal to be steered around obstacles.
Scott Reynolds, a researcher at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center, commented: ‘Millimeter wave frequencies are really line of sight. So when something blocks it, instead of the signal being interrupted, we can steer the beam around obstructions’bouncing the signal off the wall or the ceiling as necessary.”
The silicon-germanium chip can achieve 5Gbps speeds even when line of sight is blocked in this way. The next step will be to implement the chip in lower cost 65nm CMOS for the mass market.
IBM and MediaTek announced their partnership in October 2007, with the aim of enhancing the range of the former’s mmWave technology, in development in its labs since 2003. The project also looked to develop a manufacturing technique for these chipsets. While IBM contributed its work on mmWave radios, antennas and its patents, MediaTek supplied expertise in digital baseband and video processing chips.
Since the alliance was originally announced, industry interest in using license-exempt 60GHz spectrum, for uncompressed HD video and other high speed media, has intensified. There are several would-be standards, but the smart money is on WiGig, an offshoot of Wi-Fi, to win out, because it is so broadly supported by the wireless and consumer electronics sectors. It recently created an alliance with the Wi-Fi Alliance and SiBeam, the start-up behind rival platform WirelessHD, agreed to make chipsets that support both specifications. Other players are WHDI, spearheaded by Amimon, and another IEEE activity, WPAN or 802.15.3c.