Qualcomm (News 
- Alert) Atheros, the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, announced the launch of QCA7000, a HomePlug (News - Alert) Green PHY silicon solution.
In a release Dan Rabinovitsj, senior vice president and general manager, networking business unit, Qualcomm Atheros said, “The QCA7000 is a significant step in advancing the Qualcomm Internet of Everything vision. The QCA7000 is an innovative HomePlug Green PHY solution that not only delivers outstanding performance, but succeeds in providing low energy and reduced total cost of ownership for our customers in applications such as plug-in electrical vehicles, smart energy, smart grid and remote monitoring applications.”
It was revealed that the QCA7000 is designed especially for embedded smart energy and automation applications for use in homes and buildings. HomePlug Green PHY provides a power saving mechanism which helps reduce consumption of a power line communications (PLC) device.
HomePlug Green PHY covers the entire home using ROBO modes for data transmission besides it operates at the HomePlug band to avoid noise that occurs in home environments at lower frequency bands.
Officials said that the QCA7000 is integrated compactly with the power management unit, analog front-end and memory in a tiny 8x8 (News - Alert) quad-flat no-leads (QFN) package. Also the chip is powered by a single-voltage rail that brings down system cost and enables easy integration into customer designs.
For supporting embedded applications, SPI and UART host interfaces are available on the chip which allows direct connectivity to low-cost, low-power microcontrollers seen in smart energy ecosystems. A GPIO bus and an optional Flash interface are available to support simple hostless applications like smart plugs and monitoring sensors cost effectively.
Rabinovitsj added, “We believe the QCA7000 will help establish PLC technology as the de facto standard in networking low-energy wired devices in the home and enterprise. With our extensive portfolio in low-power wireless and wired connectivity technologies and increasing focus on smart grid and smart home applications, Qualcomm Atheros (News - Alert) is well positioned to bring value to a wide variety of customers serving this dynamic segment.”
HomePlug Green PHY gives a standard for powerline communications that is interoperable with the IEEE (News - Alert) 1901/HomePlug AV powerline networking protocol. HomePlug Green PHY enables low-energy, low-cost extended home coverage. This provides optimum power reduction in a given application while providing up to 10Mbps data rate to meet smart energy needs.
According to officials HomePlug Green PHY is IP-based technology that handles IP protocols, such as smart energy profile (SEP) 2.0, without translation layers besides offering support to MAC layer bridging to Wi-Fi, Ethernet and cellular technologies.
In other news, Qualcomm Atheros Inc. recently announced that the Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2100 game networking platform is integrated and available in new GIGABYTE G1.
Shamila Janakiraman is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Shamila’s articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Jennifer Russell
