Freescale announces the industry’s first system-on-chip two-way radio enabling cost effective digital radios

Freescale Semiconductor has introduced the industry’s first system-on-chip for the two-way radio market. The MC13260 consists of an integrated 32-bit ARM-9™ processor, a software defined modem, an RF transceiver and audio converters specifically designed for the two-way radio market.

The single chip MC13260 offers a high level of integration, minimizing external components and slashing the required board area. As a result, the MC13260 requires less than one third the total parts count and less than half the board space of existing solutions.

The MC13260 contains a vector digital signal modem processor specifically optimized for communication systems, which provides a low power, high MIPS solution as compared to general purpose digital signal processors used in two-way radios today. This software-defined modem offers a single platform which can implement a wide range of communications protocols and provides the flexibility to adapt to evolving standards.

The high performance RF transceiver in the MC13260 is differentiated in the level of performance achieved in such a highly integrated product. The MC13260 is able to achieve the stringent analog and digital two-way radio performance requirements. For example, 75dB adjacent channel selectivity can be achieved in a 12.5kHz system. The RF synthesizer provides very low sideband noise while tuning over the 60-960MHz range. This allows the MC13260 to be used for radios in all the important two-way radio frequency bands.