G2 Microsystems SoC for battery powered Wi-Fi devices

CAMPBELL, USA: Adding to its already successful low-power Wi-Fi Epsilon family of Wi-Fi RTLS chips, G2 Microsystems launched its new G2C543 low-power Wi-Fi SoC, G2M5437 module and Icon development kit that will make it easy for designers to connect consumer electronic devices directly to the Internet or to future Wi-Fi Personal Area Network systems.

Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous in the home, allowing a new category of devices to connect directly to the Internet or to a laptop through the emerging Wi-Fi PANs.

Overcoming the range limitations of Bluetooth and the gateway requirements of other technologies such as ZigBee, Wi-Fi can now be considered for applications such as home energy management and health monitoring, and for laptop PAN peripherals such as mice, wireless speakers and high-fidelity headphones.

Available now, G2 offers three ways to quickly and affordably embed ultra low-power Epsilon Wi-Fi technology into battery-powered CE devices:

G2C543 SoC -– The G2 Wi-Fi and networking SoC includes 32-bit CPU, operating system, network stack, crypto accelerators, power management subsystem, real-time clock and a versatile sensor interface, allowing it to serve as a networking slave or a standalone host.

Complete G2M5437 module -– Drastically reduce design times with this low-power, low-cost Epsilon Module that includes a power amplifier and antenna, G2C543 SoC, 8Mbit flash memory, and comes pre-certified for FCC and CE regulations and tested for Wi-Fi Alliance WMM and WMM Power Save modes.

Icon Development Kit -- Affordably and quickly add Wi-Fi to an applications processor-based design with the G2-IDK, which includes a small board with standard interfaces (UART, SPI, SDIO) and an Epsilon module pre-loaded with the Icon application.

Icon enables a G2 module to become a Wi-Fi networking interface for mains- and battery-powered devices. The platform is especially suited for use with 8- or 16-bit host applications processors that do not have the ability to connect to other Wi-Fi chips, or for use with 32-bit host processors that do not have enough additional bandwidth to run a network stack.