In this interview, Antti Rauhala, Vice President of Engineering at CoreHW, discusses CHW3021, a cutting-edge radio front-end IC. He explains its advanced features, applications, and how it optimizes wireless performance, power efficiency, and cost in various challenging environments.
Q1: What is CHW3021, and what is its primary function in wireless systems?
CHW3021 is a high-performance radio front-end designed to improve wireless system performance by enhancing signal range, reliability, and robustness. It achieves this through an integrated Power Amplifier (PA) and Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) while ensuring power-efficient operation. CHW3021 is also equipped with versatile antenna interfaces to optimize wireless signal strength in all use cases, ensuring stable performance.
Q2: Can you describe the key components within CHW3021?
CHW3021 integrates several critical components that work together to optimize wireless performance. At its core, it features an efficient power amplifier (PA) and a low-noise amplifier (LNA), both designed for low current consumption. Additionally, it incorporates a high-linearity bypass switch with minimal signal loss. These components are connected to either a chip antenna or a diversity antenna to maintain optimal signal strength in different scenarios, ensuring robust wireless communication.
Q3: What unique features make the CHW3021 stand out in the market compared to similar products in the market?
CHW3021 offers several unique features that set it apart. One standout is its fully integrated Chip Antenna design, which provides high performance and stable antenna matching without requiring external components. It only needs a DC decoupling capacitor on the supply voltage and a DC-block on the transceiver (TRX), which is typically part of the output filtering of devices like Bluetooth® SoCs. Furthermore, it supports versatile operating modes that are controlled via GPIO pins, including three distinct PA control modes and two LNA modes, allowing developers to optimize both performance and power consumption in each operating mode. Another key feature is antenna diversity, which maximizes radiation performance across all use cases.
Q4: How does the integrated chip antenna contribute to CHW3021’s performance?
The term "Chip Antenna" can refer to two categories: one that includes the radiating element and another that contains the antenna matching network. CHW3021 falls into the latter category, focusing on antenna matching for high performance. Due to its small size, integrating the radiating element on-chip is not feasible while maintaining high performance. However, CHW3021's Chip Antenna is highly stable across high-volume manufacturing and varied operating temperatures. Its detuning resilience ensures consistent performance against manufacturing process variations and across temperature changes, which is crucial in demanding wireless environments.
Q5: How does CHW3021 address challenges in device design?
We’ve addressed both hardware and software challenges in device design with CHW3021. On the hardware side, it is a fully integrated single-chip front-end solution, eliminating the need for external matching components and even transmission harmonics are filtered internally. Its package is IO optimized for easy PCB routing, and with a 0.5mm ball pitch, it supports a wide range of PCB technologies. From a software perspective, CHW3021 features GPIO controls that allow for easy selection of the desired operating mode, simplifying integration into various platforms.
Q6: What are the primary applications for CHW3021, and which industries benefit the most from this component?
CHW3021 is particularly well-suited for compact applications such as wireless earbuds, where space constraints limit the available area for antennas. In such cases, the signal needs to be boosted to ensure the desired signal range, reliability, and robustness. CHW3021 is an ideal solution due to its multiple operation modes, when wireless properties need to be maximized, and application current consumption has to be minimized. Beyond consumer electronics, industrial automation applications can also benefit, particularly where robust and reliable data transmission is required in challenging environments.
Q7: What kind of support and documentation is available for engineers using CHW3021?
We provide comprehensive documentation for developers and engineers working with CHW3021. This includes a detailed datasheet with electrical specifications, user guides, application schematics, and layout examples. Additionally, S-parameters for RF ports are available to help engineers optimize their designs. Our goal is to make integration as seamless as possible, providing all the necessary resources for successful deployment.
Q8: How does CHW3021 handle interference in wireless environments?
CHW3021's LNA is designed with high linearity (IIP3 of 0 dBm and IC11 dB of -10 dBm), which helps mitigate interference. If the received signal is sufficiently strong and the LNA is not required, then CHW3021 is programmed to a low-loss bypass mode, offering excellent linearity (ICP1dB = +22 dBm). This mode minimizes power consumption while maintaining signal integrity.
In scenarios where the application demands very high interference resilience, a bandpass filter can be mounted between the CHW3021 and, for example, a Bluetooth SoC. When the LNA is active, the addition of the bandpass filter has a negligible effect on receiver sensitivity and no impact on radiated output power or current consumption, ensuring the device remains efficient and performs optimally.
Q9: How does CHW3021 optimize power consumption in wireless devices?
The Bluetooth SoC analyzes the strength of the received signal (RSSI or Received Signal Strength Indicator). Based on this analysis, the appropriate operation mode of the CHW3021 is selected to optimize current consumption. The active operation modes include three different Power Amplifier (PA) modes, two modes for the Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), and a Bypass mode, allowing for dynamic optimization of current consumption based on the wireless environment. When there is no active Bluetooth communication, CHW3021 automatically enters sleep mode, from which it can transition to active mode in less than 0.8 microseconds. A robust communication link also results in fewer lost data packets, which reduces the need for retransmissions, leading to faster data throughput and optimized current consumption.
Q10: How does CHW3021 balance application performance with cost?
CHW3021 manufacturing cost is optimized for high-volume production through an efficient CMOS manufacturing process and wafer-level chip-scale packaging (WLCSP). It requires no external components and has minimal PCB requirements, further reducing costs and the total bill of materials, and efficient application development. The software development process is straightforward as well on any platform, with GPIOs allowing easy selection of the desired operating mode.
One example of the balance between application performance and cost is in applications that do not require high processing power but must operate in challenging environments, such as industrial automation. In such cases, robust data transfer is critical. The overall application cost can be optimized by selecting the appropriate features for the system-on-chip (SoC) and using the CHW3021 as a companion chip to extend the range reliably and power-efficiently.
Final Thoughts
The CHW3021 exemplifies CoreHW's commitment to advancing wireless technology. Its versatile design and performance optimization make it a powerful solution for industries requiring reliable, efficient, and robust wireless communication. For more information about CHW3021 and other innovative CoreHW products, please visit our website at https://www.corehw.com/products/rf-front-end-ic/. You can also request a data brief or contact our sales team at sales@corehw.com.