Under the continued stimulation of the Internet of Things market, the WiFi chip applied to the Internet of Things in 2015 ushered in the first "explosive" growth. According to the "smart product circle" statistics, the Salad WiFi chip shipments are not optimistic in 2014, only about 10 million or so, when the WiFi chip is basically the standard of smart hardware products, total out The volume exceeded 30 million and accompanied by intelligent hardware, and it is expected that the amount of cargo in 2016 will further increase to 100 million.
Therefore, the "Smart Product Circle" reporter visited many WiFi chip original and program merchants, from three aspects of solution, core technology, future trends, and analyzing the evolution of WiFi chips, and exploring the cause of their starting.
From multi-chip to single-chip development, games between WiFi chip manufacturers at home and abroad
In fact, in the mobile phone, tablet and other products, the stand-alone WiFi chip only has the function of connecting and transmitting signals, and the signal processing and transmission protocol TCP / IP must be placed in a powerful AP end to form a complete communication architecture. However, a large amount of intelligent hardware, such as kettle, rice cooker, lamp, soymilk, etc. in the IoT, have not strong AP, so the independent WiFi chip is of course "然并".
So, this demand first gave birth to a batch of overall solutions to solve the company, such as Qingke, Han Feng, Bolian, some people's technology, etc., all in the single-chip WiFi plug-in MCU, and write the communication protocol TCP / IP to MCU The way, serve traditional enterprise intelligent upgrade. "In a considerable period of time, single-chip WiFi plug-in MCU, almost rulled the Internet of Things wireless connection market. However, due to this cost of this program, the production cost of the traditional home appliance industry is almost extremely extreme, if added The WiFi program will cause additional burden and is not conducive to the popularity of the Internet of Things. "Anxin can CEO Zhao Tongyang.
WiFi related development board recommended:
ISP Wi-Fi Module Programmer provides a simple programming interface for network WiFi modules and SOC, which is connected to a computer via a USB interface.
ATSAMW25-XPro WiFi Evaluation Board has an industry-leading low-power 2.4GHz IEEE supports 802.11 b / g / n wireless network connection.
The BCM943362WCD4 WiFi evaluation board adopts a 32-bit embedded processor with BCM43362 wireless local area network MAC / radio.
Therefore, under the driving of the huge demand for the Internet of Things, the International Chip Design Master begins with the MCU with WiFi, reducing the chip area, while reducing the price of the chip scale (now the module price is about 9 yuan). The most typical representative, such as Qualcomm Atheros4004, Ti CC3200, Realtek8711, etc. On the other hand, how can China's chip design enterprises, MTK launched MT7681, Southern Silicon Valley 6060, Lexin 8266 and other chips, processing performance is not bad, and the price is more advantageous, the service is also more comprehensive and realized. Quickly push the Internet of Things application market.
It is foreseeable that in the case of such a multi-chip design manufacturer, the 2016 WiFi chip market will become more "lively", the game and competition between the largest factory are unprecedented, and it will attract more chip manufacturers. Continuous follow-up.
WiFi chip core technology three elements: system, power consumption, radio frequency
The joins of many chip design companies have enriched the type of WiFi chip on the market, but also make the market "good", how should customers choose the right chip? "WiFi chip design is also the key factor in measuring the quality of WiFi chip, which is three aspects of system stable and easy to develop, chip power consumption, radio frequency connection performance stabilizes." Li Shaohui, Director of Liansheng, told "Wisdom Product circle "reporter.
"Each company's WiFi chip software system is based on RTOS for development. It has its own implementation under the standard TCP / IP protocol. This requires companies to have strong software outside the hardware design capabilities. System design capabilities, providing performance-stable systems, series of APIs and complete packaged SDKs to facilitate customers to develop products on this basis. Most of the radiofrequency is analog circuit. First, the technical requirements of engineers are very high, circuit As long as there is a little deviation, WiFi may have an unstable connection, followed by complex environmental factors, there is also a high demand for chip sensitivity and receiving / transmit power. "Qualcomm regional sales manager Liang said.
In most of the Internet of Things applications, for example: drones, robots, WiFi speakers, etc., have a high demand for whole machine power consumption. Lang Liang continued: "The home appliance equipment is very high, especially when export, especially exports, the power consumption of the whole machine is very strict, and the power consumption of the equipment itself can almost extreme, so the power consumption of WiFi chips Become an additional burden. Gaotong's Atheros4004 has three low power technology.
One is that the protocol is optimized + firmware design, allowing the chip to have four working modes, avoiding all over the full load. For example: under normal operation, current is 300mA; light sleep state, current 130ua, wake up 2 ms; depth sleep state, current 10ua, wake up 35mA; almost close, current 5ua, wake up 40ms.
The second is based on the application scenario of the Internet of Things, which automatically reduces the WiFi chip transmission / accept DB value, for example: the location of the home appliance is generally fixed, and the DB value can be automatically adjusted according to the distance of the home appliance and the router, not the 18DB full load. State.
The third is the chip listening and wake-up function, and the user can set the time interval of the listener according to the needs. In addition, the device itself can also be woken up by a WiFi chip, and the rest of the time is in a sleep state, thereby further reducing the chip power consumption. "
Finally, the IP architecture in the WiFi chip is equally important. The Cortex series of ARM uses a common architecture. The frequency of TELICA is only excellent in ARM, power consumption and work efficiency than ARM performance. The MIPS architecture has high efficiency, mainly to router Netcom market. In short, for most small appliances, such as kettle, lamps, sockets, etc., the performance of the M0 series is fully met, and for application applications for functional requirements, such as white electricity, cloud platform docking, speech recognition, etc. At least M3 or more performance is required.
WiFi related development board recommended:
ISP Wi-Fi Module Programmer provides a simple programming interface for network WiFi modules and SOC, which is connected to a computer via a USB interface.
ATSAMW25-XPro WiFi Evaluation Board has an industry-leading low-power 2.4GHz IEEE supports 802.11 b / g / n wireless network connection.
The BCM943362WCD4 WiFi evaluation board adopts a 32-bit embedded processor with BCM43362 wireless local area network MAC / radio.
Development trend of WiFi chips: subdivision customization, safety integration, distributed intelligence
The fragmentation of the Internet of Things market, leading to a large differentiation of the application of the market, and the demand for WiFi chips may be more obvious. For example: The whole public launches G102 chip on CES, which is the world's first WiFi speaker special chip; the spiritual core microelectronics also launched the GKM910 chip, specializing in solving the multi-band wireless connection requirements of the home theater.
In the future, WiFi modules will bear more and more work, with cloud platform, voice control, is one of the development directions, achieving distributed intelligent demand. For example: Jiang Bolong Technology and IBM's Supervessel cooperates the "empty" cloud data service system; Si Bi Bi is cooperated with Lianshi, embeds the voice control module into the WiFi chip, and realizes transmission and local intelligence.
At the same time, the security risks of WiFi chips will also be highlighted, so encryption algorithm hardening is also the development trend of WiFi chips. Because most of the WiFi chips on the market are still using soft encryption, or the way an encrypted chip is applied. For example, Qualcomm's Atheros4004 is software encryption, and next-generation chip Atheros 4010 will use hardware encryption.
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WiFi related development board recommended:
ISP Wi-Fi Module Programmer provides a simple programming interface for network WiFi modules and SOC, which is connected to a computer via a USB interface.
ATSAMW25-XPro WiFi Evaluation Board has an industry-leading low-power 2.4GHz IEEE supports 802.11 b / g / n wireless network connection.
The BCM943362WCD4 WiFi evaluation board adopts a 32-bit embedded processor with BCM43362 wireless local area network MAC / radio.
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