Ceva-Waves 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) 1x1 20/40MHz MAC & modem

Overview

Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi IP family offers a comprehensive suite of IPs and platforms for embedding Wi-Fi connectivity into SoCs/ASSPs addressing a broad range of applications.

This Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 802.11n IP is part of the Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi Low Power category, targeted at IoT peripherals, including wearables, medical devices, wireless audio and other use cases where power and cost are critical factors. This is the industry’s smallest footprint and lowest power Wi-Fi IP compliant with 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) 1x1 20/40MHz STA.

The Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 IP consists in 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) 1x1 MAC and modem cores, supporting both STA and AP modes. The MAC is controlled by a LMAC+UMAC (aka FullMAC) software protocol stack. The IP is provided with an integration-ready processor and operating-system- agnostic platform, simplifying deployment in SoC/ASSP designs. The Wi-Fi software protocol stack can be executed on any processor such as ARM, ARC, Andes, Cortus, RISC-V and others.

The Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 platform can be used in a standalone single processor chip or integrated into a bigger SoC such as a microcontroller, an application processor or a multi-standard wireless combo.

For more comprehensive solution, the Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 IP is well complemented with Ceva-DSP such as the Ceva-BX1/2, to execute audio processing or other always on sensor hub.

Silicon independent, the Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 Low Power IP supports several radio IPs from various partners such as Sirius Wireless. Other RF can be easily supported on customer demand.

Key Features

  • 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) MAC:
    • The Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 MAC core implements the IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n standard supporting data rates of up to 150Mbps. It also supports the 802.11e standard (QoS) and the 802.11i standard (Security) extensions.
    • Ceva's profound expertise in wireless communications resulted in the highly optimized MAC core with special focus on low memory and MIPS requirements while maintaining a small gate count. The MAC core interfaces to the ARM standard AMBA bus.
  • 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) Modem:
    • The Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 Low Power hardwired modem core is optimized for use with the Ceva-Waves Wi-Fi 4 MAC IP to form a low power and cost effective 802.11n solution. The supported features are:
      • Modulation Coding Schemes (MCS) from 0 to 7
      • 20/40MHz bandwidths
      • Full implementation of OFDM processing up to the radio interface:
        • Scrambling
        • FEC coding, Viterbi & LDPC encoding/decoding
        • Interleaving
        • FFT
        • Timing, phase and frequency synchronization
        • Channel estimation & compensation
        • Reference digital front end with filtering, radio controller and software defined AGC/CCA state machine for highest flexibility

Benefits

  • low power
  • small area
  • low MIPS requirement

Block Diagram

Ceva-Waves 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) 1x1 20/40MHz MAC & modem Block Diagram

Applications

  • Power sensitive IoT applications such as wearable, smartwatch, digital camera, smart home & industrial wireless sensors, entry market smart phones and tablets.

Deliverables

  • hardware: verilog RTL, testbench, compilation, simulation and synthesis scripts
  • software: C
  • documents
  • test tool running on Windows

Technical Specifications

Foundry, Node
any
Maturity
silicon proven, Wi-Fi Alliance certified
Availability
available
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Semiconductor IP