Systemonic AG (Dresden, Germany), a contender in the market for wireless LAN chips, has acquired RF technology from Raytheon Co and plans to release its first 802.11a chipset next month
Systemonic announced this week that it has acquired Tondelayo, Raytheon's two-piece chipset for 5GHz RF, along with related intellectual property such as "novel and very important RF packaging technologies," said Nik Bahram, Systemonic's vice president of corporate ventures. Systemonic also acquired an RF subsystem design, an antenna design, and a licence to use Raytheon's gallium-arsenide power amplifier, which gives Systemonic all of the parts necessary to offer a complete 802.11 chipset, the company said.
Raytheon has taken an equity stake in Systemonic as part of the deal, and has received a licence to use the RF technologies sold to Systemonic in defence applications only. In addition, Systemonic will supply silicon germanium wafers to Raytheon. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
At a press conference, Systemonic said it will meld the Raytheon technologies with its own HiperSonic baseband ICs in subsystems that support multiple wireless LAN standards, particularly 802.11a and 802.11b. The company's technology uses custom DSPs to handle multiple standards and adapt to changes within each standard.
Systemonic's long-term goal is to produce a single-piece chipset applicable to all the various 802.11 standards, company officials said. DSP competitors such as Envara Inc and nBand Communications Inc are hatching similar plans.
In addition, wireless LAN chip players are looking to lower the cost and power of 802.11 chipsets in the hope of making the technology ubiquitous in mobile devices, particularly laptops and cellular phones.
Systemonic's first 802.11a chipset is being targeted at PCs, however. Slated for December sampling, the chipset will cost $35, which matches the offerings of other vendors such as Intersil Corp and Atheros Communications Inc.
