Dual-band Wi-Fi audio IC for IoT

News Highlights:

• Enables multi-room experience on same network with advanced timing synchronization
• Includes support for Apple AirPlay™
• Reduces cost for OEMs with fully integrated SoC and expands opportunities in home audio market

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation company in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, introduced the industry’s first dual-band Wi-Fi audio chip into its Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (WICED™) portfolio. The new system-on-a-chip (SoC) delivers high-definition (HD) audio streaming over a Wi-Fi network to wireless audio devices and minimizes interference for premium sound quality. For more news, visit Broadcom’s Newsroom.

Broadcom’s BCM43907 SoC reduces cost for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) by integrating all needed functionality onto a single device. As the first audio SoC to implement dual-band Wi-Fi, Broadcom’s BCM43907 reduces interference and delivers a cleaner overall sound to wireless streaming devices such as portable speakers, 5.1 multi-speaker systems, sound bars and media players. Devices with dual-band Wi-Fi experience fewer interruptions and benefit from a significant network performance boost by operating on two bands.

In addition, advanced radio frequency (RF) and timing synchronization enables the same content to be streamed over multiple speakers in different rooms in the home with no echo or lag time. This allows consumers to stream a variety of content to different speakers from the same device. A consumer for example can use Bluetooth to listen to a radio station from their smartphone in one room of the home while simultaneously streaming music to a portable speaker in another room, all using the same device and Wi-Fi network.

“The significant improvement in sound quality of HD audio streaming over W-Fi versus proprietary short range technologies is creating opportunities for a wide variety of new wireless streaming devices,” said Brian Bedrosian, Broadcom Senior Director, Product Marketing, Wireless Connectivity Combos. “Broadcom’s standards-based, fully integrated WICED Audio SoC offers companies of all sizes the ideal platform to design both high-end and cost-effective Wi-Fi audio products.”

The Broadcom® BCM43907 offers pre-integrated Apple Airplay support with direct access to Broadcom’s WICED Audio software development kit (SDK), expanding opportunities for developers and OEMs designing products that stream audio content from the home network or mobile devices.

Key Features of the WICED Audio SoC:

• Industry’s first dual-band Wi-Fi audio SoC
• Offers support for Apple AirPlay™ to enable media streaming from iOS devices
• Extends 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity to audio speakers
• Integrates WICED Audio SDK for a variety of HD audio applications
• Delivers low-power 1×1 802.11n WLAN SoC to OEMs
• Includes on-chip 320MHz ARM® Cortex®-R4 applications CPU for audio speaker market
• CPU includes 32KB each of instruction and data caches, along with 2MB of TCM RAM
• Offers DDR3L memory and Q-SPI Serial flash interfaces for applications and streaming content buffering

Availability
The Broadcom WICED Audio SoC is now sampling with early access customers.

Broadcom
www.broadcom.com