MediaTek Releases Wi-Fi-Bluetooth Combo Chip

MediaTek has formally announced the MT7650, a wireless chip that combines the benefits of two distinct wireless communication technologies.

The new chip combines MAC/Baseband/Radio 802.11ac Wi-Fi with Bluetooth 4.0+HS all in a single chip.

No doubt this is a result of the resource merge of MediaTek and Ralink.

At any rate, the new chip is intended for mobile consumer platforms, and this means everything from small phones to large laptops.

That is to say the list of products that will benefit from this all-in-one wireless chip includes phones, tablets, gadgets, netbooks, ultrabooks, notebooks, etc.

“The demand of high quality digital-content streaming and sharing has increased rapidly. At the same time, peer-to-peer data communication is shifting from wired to wireless connections,” said SR Tsai, general manager of MediaTek’s wireless connectivity and networking business unit.

“Therefore, mobile devices are relying heavily on high quality wireless connections, but the current Wi-Fi technology standard is overwhelmed by all the bandwidth needs. With the latest 802.11ac, the MediaTek MT7650 overcomes these challenges and allows consumers to stream and transfer heavy contents between mobile and home consumer devices much faster and much more reliable with ultra low power consumptions.”

For those who want to know more specifics, the newcomer supports dual band 2.4/5GHz single stream 802.11ac (up to 433Mb/s data rate (HT80) with antenna diversity).

Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Display are featured as well, along with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, Bluetooth 3.0 + HS and Bluetooth 4.0 LE compatibility.

Furthermore, BT Class 1 operation is possible, for better Bluetooth range, while an advanced WLAN + Bluetooth coexistence algorithm optimizes performance even further.

Not only that, but external splitters are unnecessary thanks to a shared Bluetooth and Wi-Fi signal receiving path. Finally, Wake-on-WLAN and Wake-on-Bluetooth are both present and accounted for.

MediaTek should have the chip shipping in the second half of the year. MT7650 will work under Windows 7, Windows 8 and Linux operating systems.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview