A CMOS-based, highly integrated family of RFICs has been introduced by Athena Semiconductors Inc. to serve emerging wireless WiMax and WiBro broadband applications. The first two devices available in the product family are the ATS9050 and ATS9020, and other devices are being planned. These devices serve IEEE 802.16 standards-based WiMax and WiBro applications. WiBro, in fact, is a mobile broadband access technology being developed for and deployed in South Korea. It's expected to offer download speeds of 1 Mbps to devices traveling at speeds up to 60 kmph. WiBro is based on the IEEE 802.16e technical standard. The high performance specifications of the ATS90xx devices allow deployment in harsh environments for outdoor applications. ATS90xx chips have excellent phase noise characteristics independent of channel spacing, clean transmit characteristics in terms of the error vector magnitude (EVM) and wide receive dynamic range due to low noise figure and high linearity.

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The ATS9050 is a complete RF transceiver that can support either WiMax or WiBro applications. The ATS9020 device serves only the WiBro standard offering an even lower cost alternative. The ATS90xx devices have advanced frequency synthesizers that allow any arbitrary center frequency with a resolution of 200 Hz. The devices also have highly programmable channel bandwidths supporting channels up to 40 MHz. The ATS9050 chip covers the frequency bands of 2.3-2.5 GHz, 4.9-5.35 GHz and 5.47-5.85 GHz, and ATS9020 covers the 2.3-2.5 GHz band. Initial WiMax deployments are expected in the 5.725-5.85 GHz UNII band, and the WiBro applications will be deployed in the 2.3-2.4 GHz band. ATS90xx devices can be easily combined with baseband chips to produce complete wireless broadband solutions.

Both ATS90xx devices are currently being sampled. While ATS9020 devices are available in production quantities, the ATS9050 parts will go into production in the second quarter. Pricing will vary by quantity and configurations.