SiRF debuts combo radio IC: Bluetooth and GPS
GPS semiconductor vendor SiRF announced today SiRFlinkIII, a single-chip solution which combines a GPS RF front end and a complete Bluetooth solution optimized for use with SiRF’s multifunction System on Chip (SoC) platforms, SiRFatla and SiRFprima.
The two benefits promoted by SiRF are that, first, there is no interference between the Bluetooth and the GPS signals allowing a perfect GPS signal reception even at full power Bluetooth operation and, second, a cost reduction since the Bluetooth baseband and the GPS FR front end can share components such as such as power regulators and clock sources. “SiRFlinkIII is designed to address our customers’ need to build cost-effective mobile navigation and location-aware devices with wireless connectivity for enhanced functionality, such as hands-free calling, without compromising the location performance,” said Kanwar Chadha, vice president of marketing and founder of SiRF. “By pre-integrating SiRFlinkIII with our multifunction SoC platforms, we are able to optimize the system-level performance while minimizing the design complexity for our customers to enable them to accelerate their time to market.” 
SiRFlinkIII block diagram
The SiRFlinkIII combo radio IC passed Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR qualification tests as well as interoperability testing with more than 150 popular mobile phones in the market, said SiRF. The SiRFlinkIII solution is pre-integrated with the SiRFatlas and SiRFprima SoC platforms, enabling it to include valuable features for Bluetooth operation in PNDs, such as noise and echo cancellation for superior voice performance, and is available with popular Bluetooth profiles such as HFP, A2DP, DUN and others from leading Bluetooth profile vendors.
SiRFlinkIII is the new face of SiRFlinkI which was initially announced in January 2006. The solution leverages the RF IC design capabilities of Sweden-based Kisel Microlectronics that SiRF acquired in April 2005 and the Bluetooth expertise of Impulsesoft, a Bangalore-based firm specializing in Bluetooth software that SiRF bought early 2006. In 2006 the launch of this Bluetooth solution was supposed to be a matter of months, it is finally available today. This year has seen the emergence of a new player in the GPS business, CSR, one of the top Bluetooth semiconductor companies intending to slash GPS prices in building a software GPS stack on its Bluetooth chipsets. With this Bluetooth combo, SiRF will be in a better position to fight this battle and defend its market share in the PND business. Wednesday 08th October 2008
Ludovic Privat
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