Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. started in April the mass production of RF sub-modules for Wi-Fi*1.
This product uses Murata semiconductor design technology, monolithic ceramic technology, and circuit design technology to reduce the size of the front end circuit in order to incorporate the Wi-Fi function. This enables reduction of the component surface mount area and decreasing of component contact points in comparison to circuits with the former discrete structure.
Wi-Fi is loaded as a standard function on smartphones these days, and the supporting frequency band increasingly uses the 5GHz band rather than just the former ISM 2.4GHz band. In addition, transmission speeds have improved with recent communications methods by use of spatial multiplexing, and investigation of a 2×2-MIMO*2 structure with high-end smartphones has begun. Accompanying these trends there is a concern about an increase in front end circuit complexity, additional contact points, and greater surface mount area, in comparison to former structures. Murata has implemented its original monolithic ceramic technology and semiconductor design technology to create an RF submodule that incorporates the structural components required by the front end circuit.
This greatly reduces the component mounting area and decreases the component contact points in comparison to circuits with the former discrete structure, saves area for customer design, and contributes to design resources and shortens development cycles.
