GreenPeak launches three chips for RF4CE market

UTRECHT, THE NETHERLANDS: GreenPeak Technologies, a leading fabless semiconductor company, has launched three new chips, allowing the development of robust and low cost ZigBee RF4CE remote control applications for TV’s and set-top boxes, addressing an overall one billion unit annual market.

The three devices all have full RF4CE functionality with ZRC embedded, targeting specific product applications:

* GP520: front-panel controller for set-top box with SPI/TWI interface.
* GP530: front-panel controller for TV with UART interface.
* GP540: complete, low-cost “remote control on a chip” including embedded keyboard scanner and full IR functionality.

All devices are optimized for low cost, ease of integration and allow fast time-to-market by only requiring a simple configuration step to achieve a complete RF4CE ZRC-compliant end product.

“Bringing the complete RF4CE functionality for each application into a single device makes low cost and reliable RF remote controls a reality,” said Cees Links, CEO of GreenPeak Technologies.

“This new series of RF4CE chips brings the cost of the total solution down and makes the choice for RF remote controls even easier. GreenPeak provides a streamlined one-stop-shop offering for RF4CE chips. The integration of advanced RF4CE configurability provides simplicity of integration bringing the development and integration time down to virtually zero.”

GreenPeak’s unique ultra low power and synchronization optimized for remote controls enables single coin cell battery operation for ten years or more. It also enables advanced thin remote control designs not requiring a battery lid and it implements find-me and push functionality.

GreenPeak also takes Wi-Fi coexistence one step further. The GreenPeak RF4CE chips offer an additional 30dB (1000x) better interference robustness against Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other RF signals, which is the result of a superior radio design with antenna diversity technology. This patented technology uses two separate antennas to avoid the typical in-door wave cancellation, essential when more TVs and set-top boxes will be equipped with Wi-Fi internet connections.

Much better than IR (infra-red) based remote controls, RF remote controls provide two-way high-speed communication and do not require line of sight as the radio signal transmits through cabinets, obstacles, walls and floors.

A ZigBee RF4CE remote control system (compliant with the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, operating in the 2.4GHz global frequency band) is faster, more reliable, includes richer, bi-directional communication and provides a greater range compared to traditional IR remote controls.