Patrick Mannion
TechOnline

So how'd they do that?
The design is based entirely upon a Wisair UWB hub reference design, with form-factor-related modifications. It uses Wisair's board, 502 RF front end chip and its 531 media access control (MAC) and baseband chip, both of which were announced in December of 2005. According to Yurdakul, the chips are not yet WiMedia certified so Wisair classifies them as "pre-standard." The frequency range supported is 3.1 to 4.8 GHz with three sub-bands of 528 MHz each. The maximum power output is 80 microwatts, or -41.25 dBm/MHz. For the dongle's USB controller, Wisair chose, strictly for cost reasons, the low-power Cypress CY7C68013A with a USB PHY and DMA for the dongle, as well as an integrated enhanced 8051 microcontroller. "The next version of the dongle will have the USB controller integrated," said Gadi Shor, Wisair's chief technology officer. For the hub's USB controller it went with Taiwan-based Star's STR9104. "This is normally used for network processing," said Menshulam, "but it also has a USB hub."

Figure 2: Board layout for dongle (left) shows the 502 RF chip (top) and 531 MAC baseband. Hub board shows placement of antennas at right angles (top and left) as well as, from left to right, the 502 RF chip, the 531 MAC/baseband and the Star STR9104 USB controller.

The back of the hub's board comprises a Hynix 128Mbyte DDR SDRAM (part number HY5DU281622ETP-5), an SMSC USB2504A-JT 4-port hub controller, and 32 Mbits of Spansion Mirrorbit flash memory, part number S29GL032M.

Figure 3: Back-of-board layout for dongle (top) shows the Cypress CY7C68013 USB controller. Back of hub board shows, from top to bottom, the Hynix DDR SDRAM, SMSC 4-port hub controller and the Spansion Mirrorbit flash memory.