Call Isn't Waiting: VoIP Phones Over WLAN Arrive

You've finally adjusted to the fact that your cell phone is more than a simple voice tool. Well, get ready to adjust again. Texas Instruments' TNETV1600 lets designers create phones that handle voice over Wi-Fi local-area networks (LANs). It uses the newer packet-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and works through any available wireless-LAN (WLAN) connection that employs the 802.11b/g standard (Fig. 1).

As a result, these phones will work inside the enterprise with its numerous WLAN access points, from any Wi-Fi hot spot, and through home wireless networks. With VoIP adoption well under way and the continued expansion of the WLAN infrastructure, the market is now ripe for phones with these capabilities.

The TNETV1600 is a baseband chip for a VoIP WLAN radio. It's based on TI's power-efficient OMAP16xx architecture, which is widely used in cell phones (Fig. 2). The TNETV1600 includes TI's C55x DSP and adds an ARM 926 processor, fast external memory interfaces, an LCD controller, general-purpose I/O for the keypad and LEDs, and the interface to the external codec.

The chip incorporates Telogy's VoIP software. The processor uses Linux for its operating system and features Microwindows, a graphical user interface for this software. The chip also has support for security and authentication, including WEP, WPA 1.0 and the forthcoming 2.0, Cisco, and other extensions.

The radio portion of the handset is the TI TNETW1230 wireless 802.11b/g transceiver. The external dual-channel codec, the TLV320AIC22C, integrates the drivers for handset and headset on one chip. Texas Instruments' TPS65010 power/battery-management IC completes the chip set.

The TNETV1600, which will be available late this year, will be priced at $16 in large volumes.