Nujira Cambridge wireless chip company ,now sees an opportunity to apply its envelope tracking (ET) technology to gigabit Wi-Fi systems.
The Holy Grail for Nujira is to get its silicon IP designed into the mobile chipsets at the heart of 4G smartphones.
Gigabit Wi-Fi as defined by the 802.11ac protocol standard is attracting the interest of mobile operators in the planning of future 4G networks.
So the need for greater power efficiency in the operation of the radio system is similar to that in 4G LTE systems which were the original application for Nujira’s ET chipsets and silicon intellectual property (IP).
Nujira has not yet confirmed any specific smartphone design-ins.
Operating in the 5GHz frequency band, 802.11ac high speed Wi-Fi systems have the potential to offer 500Mbit/s and even 1Gbit/s in some configurations.
With envelope tracking, the voltage of the power supply is modulated to follow the envelope of the RF signal passing through the power amplifier (PA) with just enough headroom to keep the PA running smoothly. This reduces power dissipation in the power amplifier output transistors.
If the envelope tracking power supply is switch-mode, considerable energy can be saved when transmitting peaky RF signals – which are present in 802.11ac Wi-Fi radios as well as the main 4G LTE, and LTE-A smartphone radio circuits.
