RFaxis CMOS RFeIC Boosts Zylux Wireless Surround Sound
Fabless semiconductor company RFaxis has announced its CMOS RF (Radio Frequency) Front-End Integrated Circuits (RFeICs) are powering the latest generation of wireless sound bar and subwoofer systems by Zylux Acoustic Corporation.
Zylux specialises in the design and development of consumer electronics and loudspeaker systems. The company focuses on life-style audio products, servicing major brands such as Polk Audio, Vizio, Klipsch, Harman/JBL Consumer, Philips, HP and Dell.
Designed for home theatre enthusiasts, Zylux products feature RF modules by Atmel (formerly Ozmo Devices) which use the RFaxis RFX5000 5GHz RF front-end with Ozmo2000 chipset for 802.11a 5GHz Wi-Fi Direct models, as well as modules by Freesystems with RFaxis' RFX2402C 2.4GHz RF front-end paired with the MuChip FS2219 wireless audio SoC (System-on-Chip).
"The home entertainment market continues to be a growing sector. The maturity of the home theatre systems requires technologies like ours to enable Home Area Networks (HAN) to go beyond file transfer and Internet access to more complicated operations such as multimedia streaming," states Mike Neshat, chairman and CEO of RFaxis.
"High-fidelity and high-definition audio streaming over proprietary RF connections and Wi-Fi Direct are an on-going trend. We are proud to have our technology powering these home theatre systems. We are now recognised among top-tier OEMs and ODMs as the top supplier of RF front end solutions with the highest performance and unprecedented prices," continues Neshat.
"RFaxis' technology has enabled us to offer our customers high performance and high reliability wireless audio products at very competitive prices," adds Wyatt Briant, president of Zylux America.
"Our market leadership and commitment to developing the best wired and wireless loudspeakers and lifestyle audio products is unwavering. We are very pleased to have RFaxis as our technology partner; their technology offers innovation, high quality, high scale, and cost effective solutions for our RF front-end needs."
IMS Research predicts more than 60 million audio devices will ship with Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth connectivity, including AV receivers, speaker docks, home-theatre-in-a-box (HTIB) systems and sound bars, in 2016.
Indicative of trends taking place in the consumer marketplace now, the majority of this volume will be driven by speaker docks and sound bars. As wireless home networking increases, along with consumer expectations of wireless connectivity in consumer electronics, wireless streaming in audio playback is expected to rise significantly.
The RFX5000 is a fully integrated, single-chip, single-die CMOS RFeIC which incorporates all the RF functionality needed for a typical IEEE 802.11a/n WLAN system operating in the 4.9-5.85GHz range.
Similarly, RFaxis' RFX2402C incorporates all RF front-end functionality needed for 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11b/g/n WLAN applications. The RFaxis RFeIC architecture integrates the PA, LNA, transmit and receive switching circuitry, the associated matching network, and the harmonic filter all in a CMOS single-chip device.
A live demonstration of a 2.1 wireless surround sound wireless subwoofer and sound bar system will be showcased by RFaxis at the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 8th to 11th in Las Vegas.
