IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi Pioneers Launch RFIC Design Services Company

(Business News & Technology News, 10 Jun 2008)

Indian River Silicon LLC, a full-service, employee-owned fabless wireless integrated circuit design services company, has now commenced operation. Headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, the members of Indian River Silicon's IC design team pioneered the design and development of IEEE 802.11b/g/n standards-based Wi-Fi compliant wireless integrated circuits, working together as a design team for over 10 years. Originally brought together as the wireless LAN IC development team for Harris Semiconductor/Intersil (later GlobespanVirata and Conexant through mergers and acquisitions), the Indian River Silicon IC design team is credited for developing and shipping in volume the world's first commercially available 802.11 wireless LAN chipset - PRISM. That groundbreaking development laid the foundation for the industry known today as Wi-Fi.

Over its 10-year history, the Indian River Silicon team has developed a broad portfolio of IEEE 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi chipsets. The team has shipped over 400 million chipsets in a variety of handheld dual-mode cellular handsets, client adaptors, access points and DSL gateway products.

Indian River Silicon employs more that 45 professional advanced degree engineers with more than 400 combined years of wireless communications, radio systems, and semiconductor design experience. The core team has been instrumental in the development and leadership of the IEEE 802.11 standardization process. In 1999, as Harris Semiconductor/Intersil's wireless LAN IC development team, they were founding members with board representation of the Wireless Ethernet Compatibility Alliance (WECA), now the Wi-Fi Alliance.

The company experienced immediate demand and has seen strong growth for IC development services, a reflection of the market's growing need for experienced wireless IC resources. Since its inception, Indian River has completed programs in multiple wireless technologies for industry-leading customers in the mobile/handset, Wi-Fi, DSL, Bluetooth, WiMAX and wireless broadband IC markets.

"We have a broad range of unique communications systems and IC design expertise to develop complex multi-mode, MIMO multi-band CMOS radio chipsets compliant to any cellular, wired or wireless LAN or PAN standard, including WiMAX, operating from 2GHz up to and including the 60GHz frequency band," says President and CEO Doug Schultz. "The company's core competency lies in our radio systems and RFIC, mixed-signal, embedded ultra-low power design of high volume integrated circuits in leading-edge CMOS nodes."

Indian River Silicon provides a comprehensive range of IC design and development services to its clients for a variety of low power handheld mobile client wireless communication applications. The services Indian River Silicon provides include:
- Complete wireless and wired SOC integration of 802.11a/b/g/n and multi-mode radio features and complex host and memory interfaces
- RF, mixed-signal and digital IC design including low noise amplifiers (LNAs), mixer ICs, PLL Synthesizers, ADCs and DACs
- Complete state-of-the-art engineering support for design platforms including Cadence RF/Mixed Signal, Verilog RTL, Synopsys, Magma, Caliber, MATLAB and Allegro
- Experience in a wide range of processes and foundries including: RF-CMOS, CMOS—IBM, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Chartered and STMicroelectronics; SiGe BiCMOS 350nm to 180nm in IBM and Jazz; and GaAs MesFET, pHEMPT and InGaP HBT

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