Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company MediaTek has expanded its Wifi 7 portfolio with second-generation Filogic chipsets for mainstream devices and a family of modems and chipsets to support 5G redcap.

The M60 modem IP and T300 chipset series should make it easier to facilitate the transition to 5G-NR for a wide range of applications that require long lasting and efficient battery life, such as wearables, light-weight AR devices, IoT modules, and devices built with edge AI in mind.

The Filogic 860 and 360 expand MediaTek’s platform of Wifi 7 products that use advancements in connectivity while achieving peak performance and always-on reliability.

Redcap, which stands for “reduced capability”, is designed to bring the benefits of 5G to NR consumer, enterprise and industrial devices. Taking advantage of the evolution of 5G networks to the standalone (SA) network architecture, redcap promises to deliver reliability for devices that have low bandwidth requirements, offering many of the benefits of 5G without the cost and complexity of typical 5G offerings.

“Redcap is a significant part of our mission to democratise 5G, providing our customers the ability to optimise components and deliver 5G-enabled devices from a range of applications and a range of price points,” said JC Hsu, corporate senior vice president at MediaTek. “The migration to 5G redcap will replace legacy 4G and LTE, offering significantly better power efficiency and more reliable user experiences compared with leading- edge 5G eMMB modems and legacy 4G LTE Cat 4 and Cat 6 devices.”

As a 6nm RF system-on-chip single die for redcap, the T300 will allow brands to capitalise on the emerging redcap market and create innovative designs for enterprise, industrial, consumer, AR and data-card applications. Built on the TSMC 6nm process, it integrates a single-core Arm Cortex-A35 in a compact PCB area. The SoC supports up to 227Mbit/s downlink and 122Mbit/s uplink.

Both the T300 and the M60 5G modem IP support the 3GPP R17 standard and combine power efficiency with coverage enhancements and low latency. By leveraging MediaTek’s UltraSave 4.0 technology and reducing unnecessary paging receptions, the M60 offers up to a 70% reduction in power consumption compared with similar 5G eMBB offerings and up to 75% power savings compared with 4G LTE.

Filogic 860 combines a Wifi 7 dual-band access point with a network processor and is for enterprise access points, service provider Ethernet gateways and mesh nodes, as well as retail and IoT router applications.

Filogic 360 is a stand-alone client that integrates Wifi 7 2×2 and dual Bluetooth 5.4 radios in one chip, and can deliver Wifi 7 connectivity to edge devices, streaming devices and an array of other consumer electronics.

“MediaTek stands out with the most comprehensive connectivity portfolio on the market, and we’re continuing this legacy with our two new advanced Wifi 7 options designed for mainstream applications,” said Alan Hsu, corporate vice president at MediaTek. “Filogic 860 and 360 offer the same technology as our premium solutions with exceptional reliability in busy network environments, ultra-fast speeds with reduced latency, and enhanced range.”

For the enterprise and retail markets, Filogic 860 provides a complete platform for a dual-band Wifi 7 access point, router and mesh node. Building on the success of its first-generation design, Filogic 860 is equipped with a triple-core Arm Cortex-A73 CPU that supports hardware acceleration for tunneling and security features to meet enterprise, service provider requirements.

The platform has a 6nm low power wifi design and includes single-mac MLO support, 4096-QAM and MRU support, dual-band Wifi 7 with 7.2Gbit/s dual-band MLO speed, dual-band and dual concurrent capabilities with 4T4R for 2.4GHz up to BW40 and 5T5R 4SS for 5GHz up to BW160, support for an additional receive antenna for zero-wait DFS, and Filogic Xtra range support, boosting receiving distance using an extra antenna.

The Filogic 360 is a stand-alone, single chip Wifi 7 2×2 and dual Bluetooth 5.4 product to deliver connectivity for high-performance clients such as smartphones, PCs, laptops, set-top boxes and OTT streaming.

Features of the Filogic 360 include triple-band selectable Wifi 7 2×2 with up to 2.9Gbit/s speed, 4096-QAM and MRU support, 160MHz channel bandwidth support, Filogic Xtra range support, boosting communication distance by hybrid MLO, support for dual Bluetooth 5.4 cores for gaming and other applications, and BLE audio with integrated DSP for LC3 codec.

MediaTek wifi and Bluetooth coexistence technology ensures both technologies can operate on the 2.4GHz band seamlessly, without interference.

The Filogic 860 and 360 have begun sampling to customers and mass production is anticipated for mid-2024.

MediaTek (www.mediatek.com) is a fabless semiconductor company that enables nearly two billion connected devices a year. It develops systems-on-chip (SoCs) for mobile, home entertainment, connectivity and IoT products.

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