#WIRELESS: "Freescale aims baseband/RF SoCs at two-way radio"

Since announcing in early 2009 that it was exiting the cellular platform business, Freescale has begun targeting wireless applications that require long battery life combined with low cost. Now the downsized Cellular Products division is making SoCs targeted at two-way radios and smart meters while finalizing the IP for a new breed of software-configurable multi-mode cellular basebands. Look for Freescale-branded basebands in 2011. R. Colin Johnson, Kyoto Prize Fellow @NextGenLog


Freescale's Ruby vector processors, Amber channel coding and RF transcievers enable the Cellular Product Division (CPD) to leverage its intellectual property (IP) for two-way radio, wireless medical monitoring, smart meters and software-configurable multi-mode cellular basebands.

When Freescale Semiconductor Inc. spun off from Motorola in 2004, some assumed that the new chip maker would be prohibited from making products for cellular phone handsets. But, in fact, Freescale's Cellular Products Group inherited most of the baseband intellectual property (IP) from Motorola and hired its own cellular software gurus to replace those that stayed at Motorola...Separate "Ruby" and "Amber" baseband IP efforts, along with its extensive IP for making all-CMOS radio transceivers in the range of 50-MHz to 2.6 GHz using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), enable Freescale to produce specialized SoCs for two-way radios, wireless medical monitors, smartmeter market and multi-model handsets...
Full Text: http://bit.ly/NextGenLog-fMLA