Concept: Taiwanese semiconductor company MediaTek has launched system-on-chips (SoCs), Filogic 130, and Filogic 130A to bring Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity to IoT devices. The SoCs can also integrate with an AI engine, microprocessor (MCU), and a power management unit (PMU) into a single chip. The Filogic 130A also includes an audio digital signal processor, making it simple for device manufacturers to integrate voice assistants and other services into their products. The solutions can provide energy-efficient, dependable, and high-performance connectivity in small form factor designs, making them ideal for a variety of IoT devices.
Nature of Disruption: Both Filogic 130 and Filogic 130A have 1T1R mode Wi-Fi 6 connectivity and dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz, as well as sophisticated Wi-Fi capabilities including target wake time (TWT), MU-MIMO (Multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output technology), MU-OFDMA (Multi-user, multiple Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access), quality of service (QoS), and WPA3 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 3) Wi-Fi security. The solutions feature enhanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth coexistence to ensure that users’ Wi-Fi connectivity remains dependable even when Bluetooth devices are in use at the same time. Both single-chip solutions feature an Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller with embedded RAM and external memory, as well as an integrated front-end module (iFEM) with low noise amplifier (LNA) and power amplifier (PA) capabilities. The Filogic 130A includes a HiFi4 DSP, an audio/voice processor for better far-field voice processing, as well as an always-on microphone with voice activity detection and trigger word support. The SoCs are designed to attain Energy Star and Green Appliance ratings and certifications by maximizing power efficiency in the smallest and lowest-power form factor possible. Secure boot and hardware crypto engines are also supported, as well as a range of interfaces including SPI, UART (universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter), AUXADC, PWM (pulse-width modulation), and GPIO (general-purpose input/output) interfaces to make the design process easier.
Outlook: With the growing demand for more AI processing power, energy efficiency, and robust security, modern connectivity technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 could become a must-have for smart home devices in the coming years. The Filogic 130 and Filogic 130A solutions from MediaTek claim to provide the right combination of features to aid with this transition. These solutions with a highly integrated architecture could pack on-chip computing and power-management technologies into a tiny package in the size of a thumbnail. By combining advanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth features with the latest voice processing and power-management technologies, the company plans to capture the IoT market.
This article was originally published in Verdict.co.uk