Recently, at a media day event held by Qorvo, Qorvo demonstrated its in-depth layout in wireless RF, multi-protocol integration, and energy efficiency optimization, and released technological achievements in three core areas: high-reliability evolution of Wi-Fi 8, UWB precise positioning and Matter multi-protocol ecosystem, and PMIC solutions with integrated PLP functions, providing the industry with a full-chain solution from technology to implementation.
Qorvo Wi-Fi 8 Solution: A Leap from Speed to Stability
Since Wi-Fi 6, the pursuit of extreme connection speed has become the focus of wireless networks. However, the evolution direction of Wi-Fi 8 has shifted to "Ultra High Reliability". Its goal is to optimize multi-device coordination and network stability through technologies such as Coordinated Spatial Reuse (Co-SR) and Coordinated Beamforming (Co-BF), and reduce latency to milliseconds to meet the real-time requirements of industrial automation, telemedicine, AR/VR and other scenarios.
At the event, Jianfu Lin, senior marketing manager of Qorvo's wireless connectivity business unit in the Asia Pacific region, pointed out that the underlying architecture of Wi-Fi 8 does not blindly pursue higher modulation levels (such as 4096QAM to 8K QAM) or wider frequency bands (such as 640MHz), but solves interference problems in Wi-Fi 7 deployments through technologies such as dynamic power adjustment and multi-link protocol. For example, in MU-MIMO scenarios, Wi-Fi 8 can dynamically adjust the transmission power according to the user's distance to avoid near-end devices suppressing far-end signals, thereby improving overall network efficiency.
As a leading RF front-end supplier of Wi-Fi technology, Qorvo has deployed a number of key technologies and products. Starting with Wi-Fi 7, Qorvo has gradually moved from traditional linear amplifiers to non-linear amplifiers in front-end RF component design, and combined with digital pre-distortion (DPD) technology, it can effectively reduce system power consumption. For example, for a 12-channel AP, the use of a non-linear amplifier solution can reduce power consumption by about 6W. More importantly, Qorvo has now deeply collaborated with Qualcomm, Broadcom and other main control chip manufacturers to adapt the DPD algorithm to mainstream platforms. In addition, Qorvo provides a full-band RF and filter combination solution that fully supports the 2.4GHz/5GHz/6GHz three-band and is compatible with future spectrum dynamic adjustment. Qorvo's filtering products cover different global spectrums and provide filters that meet future spectrum requirements in line with global spectrum needs.
Although Wi-Fi 6 is still the mainstream and Wi-Fi 7 is slow to be popularized due to its high cost, Lin Jianfu believes that Wi-Fi 8 will be available in 2028.
UWB precise positioning and Matter protocol open a new era of spatial perception
With the three advantages of centimeter-level positioning accuracy, physical layer security features, and radar detection, UWB (ultra-wideband) technology is rapidly penetrating from industrial positioning to the consumer market. At the event, Qorvo introduced the third-generation UWB SoC product-QM35825, which has achieved major breakthroughs in full integration and low power consumption.
Data shows that QM35825 is a UWB SoC that supports a single-transmitter, three-receiver architecture. It has a 104dB link budget and on-chip artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) processing capabilities, which significantly improves ranging accuracy and stability.
Qorvo senior market manager Shih-Ching Yu said that this high-performance, ultra-low-power SoC uses radar-based sensing technology to achieve precise positioning and tracking, and is suitable for scenarios such as presence detection automation, home security access control, contactless vital sign monitoring, and personalized content experience. The QM35825 is currently sampling to key customers and leading network infrastructure suppliers, and the QM35825 evaluation and development kit will be available through Qorvo's global distributors in June; the kit includes a complete configurable software package, as well as sample applications and developer tools.
"As more and more mobile phones and terminal product manufacturers support UWB, UWB may become a standard feature of mobile phones and other devices in the future. In addition, UWB is also used in scenarios such as smart tags and digital key technology. In 2024, the leading AP manufacturers in the United States will reduce UWB to Wi-Fi 7 routers, providing industrial and enterprise customers with ready-made UWB infrastructure, and will reduce UWB to Wi-Fi 7 routers, providing industrial and enterprise customers with ready-made UWB infrastructure, tracking Qorvo Senior Market Manager Yu Shikun further emphasized.
At the event, in addition to QM35825, Qorvo also displayed the QPG6200 series of products to address the pain point of smart home protocol fragmentation. It can support the coexistence of Matter, Zigbee, and Bluetooth, and achieve seamless compatibility through multi-RF concurrency, antenna classification technology, hardware-level scheduling and other technologies. Yu Shiyan predicts that the Matter protocol will accelerate the evolution of smart homes from "single-point intelligence" to "whole-house intelligence", and realize "spatial perception intelligence" through the integration of UWB+AI.
Using integrated PMIC to lay a solid foundation for high-performance storage in data centers
We know that the explosion of AI computing power and data volume has driven a surge in demand for enterprise-level SSDs. In Qorvo's view, although enterprise-level SSDs have many advantages, they still face many challenges in terms of data integrity, heat dissipation and power consumption, and design complexity.
At the event, Qorvo focused on introducing two PMIC products, ACT85411/ACT85611, that integrate PLP functions to address the above challenges. Qorvo Application Manager Zhang Junyue said that traditional discrete component solutions require the use of 4
1 DCDC chip + 1 PLP chip, plus a large number of peripheral capacitors, resistors and other components, not only take up a lot of PCB space, compress the storage particle layout area, but also lead to complex procurement management and high costs.
Qorvo's integrated solution only requires a single chip to achieve the same function, directly reducing 5 chips and nearly half of the peripheral components, greatly reducing the layout area, freeing up more space for storing particles, and significantly improving storage density. In addition, the integrated design optimizes the power timing through internal logic control circuits, solving the problem that discrete components are difficult to accurately control the startup/shutdown timing of multiple modules. Timing parameters can be programmed in real time through the I2C interface without the need to re-layout the circuit board, greatly improving engineers' debugging efficiency.
Qorvo's PLP can also provide intelligent capacitor health monitoring technology, constantly monitoring the state of energy storage capacitors to ensure a stable supply of energy sources after power failure, and safeguarding the integrity of data.
It is not difficult to find that as the parameters of AI large models exceed the trillion level, the storage system needs to meet the requirements of "high bandwidth, low latency, and high reliability" at the same time. Qorvo's PMIC solution integrating PLP can provide security for the integrated storage and computing architecture. In the future, Qorvo will continue to focus on the storage market, actively follow up on new user needs, and maintain its position as an industry leader.
In the end:
In the wave of intelligence, reliability, security, and energy efficiency will become the core yardsticks for measuring the value of technology. Whether it is Wi-Fi 8's reshaping of the industrial Internet, UWB's development of spatial perception, or PLP's protection of data assets, Qorvo has always taken "connecting without boundaries, intelligently protecting the future" as its mission to promote the inclusiveness of technology and win-win ecology.
As Lin Jianfu said, the ultimate goal of technology is not to pursue the limits of parameters, but to make the complex simple and the unreliable reliable.
