CEVA extends Wi-Fi portfolio with Wi-Fi 6/6E IP

CEVA a licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies and integrated IP solutions, has announced the latest member of its widely adopted RivieraWaves Wi-Fi IP family, the RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 Access Point (AP) IP.  Addressing the expansion of Wi-Fi 6 into the smart home, industrial, automotive and IoT markets, and the growing need for high bit rate, low latency connectivity in emerging consumer and enterprise applications, the RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 Access Point (AP) IP leverages all the latest advanced features of the IEEE 802.11ax standard to deliver a premium Wi-Fi user experience in today’s device-dense home / office / factory.

Wi-Fi 6 is on the cusp of mass global adoption and is on track to displace Wi-Fi 5 (i.e., IEEE 802.11ac) by 2023 as the dominant form of consumer Wi-Fi. ABI Research forecasts more than 1 billion consumer, enterprise and carrier Wi-Fi access points to ship between 2022 and 2026, the vast majority of which will be based on the Wi-Fi 6/6E standards.

The modern home and office environment is a sea of high bandwidth clients such as phones, laptops, tablets, gaming stations, smart TVs and set-top boxes, plus an increasing army of IoT devices spanning smart appliances, lights, plugs, thermostats, video doorbells and many more. In addition, Industry 4.0 use cases, such as manufacturing and factory automation, demand a cost-effective, low-latency, high-performance indoor connectivity in challenging environments. The innovations inherent in Wi-Fi 6 make it ideal for such heterogeneous ultra-high concurrency environments. Advanced features such as multi-user OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access) downlink and uplink as well as Multi-User MIMO, deliver incredible performance, efficiency and low latency. Further, with the new 6GHz spectrum resource opened by Wi-Fi 6E, super-high throughput with 160HMz bandwidth connections is realistic even in congested environments.

The RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 Access Point IP delivers a complete digital PHY and MAC layers solution for IEEE 802.11ax in a 2x2 configuration, supporting up to 160MHz bandwidth and a throughput of up to 2401Mbps (at MCS11-2SS-160MHz). It supports a comprehensive toolbox of AES-CCM /GCMP, RC4 and WPI crypto accelerators but also some key features to enhance medium usage like the preamble puncturing, target wake time (TWT), fragmentation and 1024 QAM. An advanced PTA function ensures smooth co-existence with Bluetooth. The flexible radio interface unit enables integration with radio circuitry from multiple CEVA partners or licensee’s own radio, including with radios that support 6GHz for Wi-Fi 6E. To simplify deployment in SoC/ASSP designs, the RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 Access Point IP is provided with an integration-ready platform containing an optional open-source RISC-V processor and is operating-system-agnostic.

Tal Shalev, Vice President and General Manager of the Wireless IoT Business Unit at CEVA, commented: “Addressing the tremendous growth opportunities for high performance access points in the home, office, enterprise and industrial environments, our RivieraWaves Wi-Fi 6 Access Point IP lowers the entry barriers and accelerates time-to-market for developing Wi-Fi 6/6E Access Point SoCs. We are experiencing strong demand from semiconductors and OEMs for this latest IP, with multiple licensees already signed. We look forward to seeing CEVA-powered Wi-Fi6/6E Access Point products in the market in the near future.”