January 15, 2013, Seoul — STMicroelectronics (ST), a global semiconductor company providing a wide range of electronic applications, has launched the new Diplexer DIP2450, which improves wireless networking speeds for connected devices such as smartphones and tablets. This new product reduces space and power consumption during product design, enabling the integration of more diverse features and extended battery life.

ST's latest DIP2450 diplexer is used to connect Wi-Fi ICs to a single antenna, which simplifies the circuit and reduces PC board space. Bluetooth ICs can also be connected to the same antenna. Utilizing ST's IPD[1] process technology, the DIP2450 is implemented in an ultra-small size of 1.1 x 1.25 mm and efficiently transmits signals to enable high-speed communication and low power consumption.

The DIP2450 supports the latest high-speed dual-band Wi-Fi standard (IEEE 802.11n), enabling multi-channel communication in the 5GHz band in addition to the existing 2.4GHz band. Consequently, user capacity and data rates per user are increased. Mobile phones supporting IEEE 802.11n achieve speeds of over 60Mbps, which is higher than the world's highest average broadband internet connection speed of 50Mbps recorded in countries such as Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan.

The DIP2450 diplexer has already proven its performance by being used with ST-Ericsson's CW1260 dual-band Wi-Fi SoC for multi-radio mobile applications. The CW1260 also uses two of ST's IPD products: a 5 GHz band filter (BPF) and a paired balun [2]. This complete solution reduces power consumption to extend battery life, saves PC board space, and reduces the number of components.

ST offers a diverse range of IPD products for RF applications. These provide benefits such as a competitive cost structure, small form factor, and reduced power loss in systems including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, WiMAX, and 3G LTE. IPD products include diplexers, filters, baluns, RF couplers, triplexers, and impedance matching devices.

Eric Paris, Product Marketing Director at ST ASD & IPAD, said, “The new diplexer, which excels in high-speed Wi-Fi applications, demonstrates ST’s position in supplying high-performance RF front-end components by delivering the highest density, smallest footprint, and an exquisite ensemble of power consumption and size.”

Key Features of DIP2450-01D3:
• Footprint of 1.4 mm² or less
• Low profile (less than 600µm after reflow)
• Average insertion loss 0.6dB (2.4GHz and 5GHz)
• High damping
• Strong rejection of out-of-band frequencies
• Achievement of stable and highly reproducible RF front-end characteristics through IPD integration

The DIP2450-01D3 is currently in mass production as a 1.1 x 1.25 mm 4-bump wafer-level chip scale package (WLCSP) and is priced starting at $0.12 for volumes of over 1,000 units.