PRISM WLAN chipset for wireless-to-broadband connectivity

28 February 2001 Telecoms, Datacoms, Wireless, IoT

Intersil offers a family of wireless chips to support the development of a wide variety of small Internet information appliances to give users speedy, wire-free access to data, video and voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) services. Key to the development of these new wireless Internet-capable appliances is the availability of a very high-speed, full-featured and standards-compatible wireless module in half the size of current solutions.

Intersil has developed the world's first single-chip baseband processor (BBP) and medium access controller (MAC) supporting wireless Ethernet speeds for use in IEEE 802.11 standard-based systems. The new BBP/MAC digital chips sit at the heart of the four-chip PRISM 2.5 WLAN solution. Previous PRISM 11 Mbps sets comprised five PRISM chips.

"This is the world's first combined baseband processor and MAC supporting 11 Mbps wireless," said Greg Williams, Intersil's President and CEO. "By reducing the number of chips, new solutions using smaller form factors such as miniPCI and CompactFlash can be achieved in addition to the current PCMCIA cards widely used today in laptop computers."

The PRISM BBP/MAC family starts with three highly integrated chips, all of which interface to existing PRISM front-end chip sets. The ISL3873 combines a PRISM baseband processor (the ISL3863) with a CHOICE MAC (the HFA3842), featuring a USB interface for customers deploying easy-use, 'plug and play' solutions. The ISL3873P supplies a PCI interface, very important for embedded applications. The ISL3875 combines the same PRISM baseband with an ARM-based MAC, giving customers an easy customisation route thanks to the industry standard ARM core processor.

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