RF chips may one day be as common as microcontrollers and microprocessors, pervading all areas of consumer and enterprise applications, and spreading wireless connectivity just about everywhere. That message was at the heart of the keynote talk delivered by Dr. Henry Samueli at the recent Wireless Systems Design conference in San Diego.

In his speech, “Wireless in Everything: Life in a Fully Connected World,” Samueli, who is chairman, CTO and cofounder of Broadcom Corp., discussed how technology and business trends are driving us toward an era of pervasive wireless connectivity. Though technical challenges remain, RF integration based on CMOS technology will be a key enabler for the proliferation of wireless. Leaving no doubt about his optimism, Samueli stated, “You will be connected!”

To provide a historical perspective, Samueli described a series of “revolutions” experienced by the industry. First was the computing revolution in which microprocessors and microcontrollers became the first chips to be deployed everywhere. Displaying a growth curve for these devices, Samueli pointed to fact that 6 billion of these devices were produced last year. He further noted that, while the Pentium-style microprocessors garner much attention, embedded microcontrollers accounted for the majority of these billions of chips. The question now, said Dr. Samueli, is whether we can get to that level with RF chips. Samueli continued by pointing to subsequent “revolutions” in data connectivity (various Ethernet technologies), broadband access (cable and DSL), and the cellular market. Samueli dubbed the next revolution, “Wireless in Everything,” and pointed to four technology categories that will provide its underpinnings. Wireless wide area networks (WWANs) will offer high-speed connectivity at distances of 1000 m, wireless LANs (WLANs) will provide connectivity at 100m, Wireless personal area networks (WPANs) will maintain the links in the 10 m range, and RFID will offer short range connectivity at 1 m distances.

The growth in Bluetooth applications, the current popularity of the Blackberry, and projections for near term RFID growth (unit sales for transponders are rising into the hundreds of millions), are among the signs of the pending wireless revolution. According to Samueli, advances in analog, digital, and RF silicon integration now make it possible to put a radio transceiver in any product. Citing a single-chip Bluetooth radio as an example, Samueli said it’s possible to obtain integration without performance degradation.

Samueli cited some of the familiar challenges to RF integration—the noise and spurs contributed by high-speed digital circuitry and the low-voltage supplies demanded by deep submicron CMOS processes. However, he also pointed to some significant benefits of CMOS integration for RF, saying “Digital transistors are essentially free.” For example, in a 130-nm process, the cost per transistor will be just 0.00001 cents. Some of these free transistors may be used to implement self-calibration circuitry. Before the wireless world can be fully realized, many engineering tasks must be addressed. Samueli noted a number of areas that present opportunities for further R&D. These include continuous speech recognition (to overcome the awkwardness of tiny keyboards), seamless security and authentication, and biometric security. In addition, Samueli also cited the need for content protection and digital rights management. Another challenge noted by the speaker will be managing the complexity of networks constructed of trillions of nodes.

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