Conexant Systems, Inc. is introducing a low power and small form factor 802.11g wireless local area network (WLAN) radio for embedded mobile applications.

The single-chip CX3110X is a power-efficient, compact chip targeted at high performance, battery operated mobile devices such as multimedia cellular phones, enterprise handsets, PDAs, and digital cameras.

Manufacturers will probably be attracted to two interesting features of this new chip: the CX3110X is packaged in a 12.5 x 7 millimeter low profile ball grid array (LPBGA), and is priced at US$15.00 each in quantities of 10,000.

The CX3110X is shipping in volume quantities to customers now, and has been designed into several handset models by one the world's largest cellular telephone manufacturers. A hardware and software reference design is also available to enable manufacturers and system integrators to rapidly integrate wireless connectivity into mobile platforms.

According to industry analyst firm InStat, shipments of Wi-Fi enabled cellular handsets are expected to reach approximately 22 million in 2009, and dual cellular/WLAN voice handsets are expected to reach nearly 90 million for the same time period.

The standards-compliant CX3110X is a fully integrated wireless radio that includes a zero intermediate frequency (ZIF) transceiver, radio frequency (RF) synthesizer/voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), high-speed data converters, ARM9(R)-based media access controller (MAC), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing/complementary code key (OFDM/CCK) digital baseband processor, and a complete power management unit (PMU). Host control is provided by a flexible serial peripheral interface (SPI) supporting bit rates of 48 Mbps. For maximum flexibility, the CX3110X accepts system reference clock frequencies of 19.2, 26, 38.4, and 40 MHz to provide coexistence with other cellular nodes.

The ultra low-power CX3110X radio includes Conexant's PowerSave technology, which provides an intelligent power control capability, an industry-leading low power standby mode, and reduced peak and overall low power consumption for extended battery life.