Dialog releases low power wi-fi SoC following acquisition
Following the acquisition of Silicon Motion’s Mobile Communications, Dialog has introduced the FC9000, enabling direct connectivity to Wi-Fi networks, while typically supporting a battery power lifetime greater than one year. It is designed for battery-powered IoT devices such as smart door locks, video monitoring systems, smart thermostats, and wireless sensors.
Before the FC900, devices running on Zigbee, ZWave or Bluetooth standards needed to be paired with a gateway or smartphone to enable connectivity to the cloud, adding complexity and unnecessary costs for IoT adoption, explains Dialog.
“The FC9000, the first product in our new VirtualZero product line, complements our existing portfolio of leading Bluetooth low energy SoC’s for connected devices and represents our next IoT connectivity innovation to pass on to our customers,” explains Sean McGrath, senior vice president and general manager of Dialog Semiconductor’s Connectivity and Audio Business Group. It is the first in a planned series for IoT network compatibility and power consumption.
The FC9000’s proprietary power-saving algorithms set a new industry power benchmark, claims Dialog, which allows it to operate on just a few microA, increasing overall battery life for end-devices.
The SoC also has a separate hardware accelerated encryption engine that increases the speed of wi-fi encryption, such as WPA2-Enterprise and WPA2-Personal. This support also extends to higher layer commercial grade security encryption, such as transport layer security (TLS), for enabling hyper-text transfer protocols secure (HTTPS), the standard for website security.
The FC9000 is a full offload system for wi-fi networking, running the end device’s application code alongside its own. It does not require an external network processor or microcontroller but can operate alongside a microcontroller if desired. The software development kit included with the device allows for rapid design implementation with 1.6Mbyte of o-board SRAM.
The FC9000 SoC is in volume production today and available as an SoC or integrated module. Both are wi-fi certified. The modules are FCC, IC, and CE certified for worldwide operation.
