Schweiz:
LucidPort Technology focuses on developing Certified Wireless USB Controllers. Powered by WiMedia's Ultra Wide Band technology, Certified Wireless USB combines the ease of use of traditional USB with better bandwidth, security, and power management than existing wireless standards.
Adopted by the USB standards committee, Certified Wireless USB is software compatible with standard USB. This means that drivers written for wired USB peripherals can work unchanged for equivalent wireless USB devices. As such, Certified Wireless USB is a natural upgrade from USB 2.0.
LucidPort's wireless USB controllers are designed for integration into PC peripherals that need to connect to either wired and wireless USB.
LucidPort Technology is a member of the WiMedia/Multiband OFDM Alliance and the USB Implementor's Forum.
Native Peripherals
LucidPort provides wireless USB controller chips for direct integration into natively wireless PC Peripherals.
Typical applications:
- printers
- scanners
- modems
- set top boxes
- MP3 players
- cameras
- phones
Example:
Notebook with wireless high-bandwidth access to cable modem (DSL) and printer.
- The natural location for a cable modem is near the cable outlet, not near the computer with a thick black cable trailing across the room.
- With wireless, a printer can be placed on a second table without someone tripping over the cable hanging between it and the PC.
L800 USB Peripheral Controller
The L800 is well suited for devices that need to connect to either wired or wireless USB without the user specifying which transport mechanism to use. As both ports operate similarily on the L800, a single driver supports them both. This eliminates the need to modify legacy wired USB code for device association. The L800 controls both wired and wireless USB connections using the same firmware.
- Support for both wired and wireless USB connections
- Descriptor based architecture allows configurable endpoints, buffer sizes, and burst lengths
- 8/16 bit memory mapped interface with DMA slave support
- Supports most USB device class drivers including mass storage, printer, scanner, and video classes
- Requires CPU and WiMedia UWB PHY
Hardware Connections
- The L800 connects to any standard WiMedia UWB PHY for Certified Wireless USB
- The L800 integrates a wired USB 2.0 PHY. It can hook directly to a USB device "B-type" connector
- The L800’s memory mapped interface connects directly to the memory bus of a CPU or DSP
- This is a slave only bus, configurable to 8 or 16 bit data widths
- The L800 provides control signals to direct external DMA controllers
Applications
The L800 can be placed on a module to provide both wired and wireless USB connections as needed. A single driver runs both the wired and wireless connections. The wired USB port can be used for both data transfer and for cable association. This module is available from LucidPort.
If the design requires USB 2.0 but is uncertain about wireless USB, integrate the L800 for USB 2.0, then later add an UWB PHY module when wireless USB is desired. The PHY module uses an industry standard interface and connector. This puts the expensive and non-digital parts of the design on an independent, hardware only module. This module is available from LucidPort as well as from most UWB PHY vendors.
Summery
- The L800 is highly configurable
- The microprocessor bus connects gluelessly to most CPUs and DSPs’ memory buses. Pin polarities and timings are flexible.
- The number of USB endpoints, buffer sizes, burst lengths, and max packets size are all configurable by descriptors.
- The L800 offers high throughput
- Multiple buffers allow USB transfers to run independently of CPU transfers.
- This allows each side to run as quickly and efficiently as possible.
- The L800 has both wired and wireless USB interfaces
- A single firmware driver can operate both USB interfaces.
- The wired USB port can be used for cable association or regular data transfer. There is no need to modify legacy USB drivers to support association.
- Software (with source code) is available from LucidPort for driver development.
