Start-up to offer integrated multimode RF for wireless

Start-up to offer integrated multimode RF for wireless
By Darrell Dunn, EBN
March 7, 2001 (4:06 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010307S0048

A start-up company appears to have taken the lead in RF integration with a promise to deliver by the end of the year a single-chip device that provides capabilities for GSM/GPRS, GPS, and Bluetooth.

Ashvattha Semiconductor Inc., which began operations in January, has had initial silicon manufactured by IBM using a 0.25-micron silicon germanium BiCMOS process. The results demonstrate the feasibility of the company's high-integration product strategy, it claims.

Other RF suppliers in the portable handset arena are currently utilizing separate RF chips for GSM, GPS, and Bluetooth.

Kartik Sridharan, chief executive of Ashvattha in Jacksonville, Fla., said the company plans to have its part on the market by the end of the year or early 2002.

A version for the CDMA market with GPS and Bluetooth is planned for later in 2002, and a wideband CDMA with GPS and Bluetooth device is likely for late 2002 or early 2003.

“We not only take all the R F for GSM, GPS, and Bluetooth, and cram all those onto a single chip, but we also allow for simultaneous modes of operation,” Sridharan said. “When we do this integration we are also very mindful of a the important parameters for handheld devices like power consumption, form factor, and cost.”

The company uses patent-pending technology that creates isolation structures between the RF devices on the chip to substantially reduce cross-talk and noise susceptibility, Sridharan said.

Ashvattha recently closed a $4.5 million round of financing from Comstellar Technologies Inc., and Redwood Ventures.