Broadcom BCM4389 blazes trail with multi-gigabit, low latency Wi-Fi and superior Bluetooth audio experience

SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Broad­com Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) today announ­ced the world’s first Wi-Fi 6E cli­ent device, the BCM4389. Wi-Fi 6E extends the Wi-Fi 6 stan­dard to sup­port the soon-to-be-ope­ra­tio­nal 6 GHz band with wider 160 MHz chan­nel band­widths that dou­ble Wi-Fi speeds and cut laten­cy in half com­pared to Wi-Fi 5. The BCM4389 deli­vers over 2 Gbps of real-world speeds and up to five times bet­ter bat­tery uti­liza­ti­on, making it an ide­al solu­ti­on for flag­ship smart­phones and future AR/VR devices. 

Wi-Fi 6E builds on the rich fea­ture set of Wi-Fi 6, which includes impro­ved per­for­mance in crow­ded envi­ron­ments, advan­ced roa­ming capa­bi­li­ties and increased secu­ri­ty. This enhance­ment of Wi-Fi 6 uses new spec­trum in the 6 GHz band to deli­ver mul­ti-giga­bit speeds while avo­i­ding con­ges­ti­on with lega­cy devices. The BCM4389 expands on the acce­le­ra­ted deploy­ment of Wi-Fi 6, deli­ve­ring a ste­ady, swift and secu­re con­su­mer expe­ri­ence in tan­dem with over 150 mil­li­on smart­phones alre­a­dy in the mar­ket. With the addi­tio­nal inno­va­tions of Wi-Fi 6E, it unlocks high-speed bi-direc­tion­al video appli­ca­ti­ons and aug­men­ted rea­li­ty. For more on Wi-Fi 6E and 6 GHz Wi-Fi, read our blog here.

The BCM4389 also brings advan­ced mul­ti-radio tech­no­lo­gy to Blue­tooth. Inspi­red by sophisti­ca­ted Wi-Fi com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on tech­ni­ques such as mul­ti­ple-input mul­ti­ple-out­put (MIMO) and beam­forming, the BCM4389 impro­ves audio per­for­mance and ran­ge for any con­nec­ted Blue­tooth acces­so­ry. Pho­nes equip­ped with the BCM4389 will pro­vi­de a seam­less, “glitch-free” audio expe­ri­ence with popu­lar Blue­tooth head­sets even in con­ge­sted places such as sub­way stations. 

In yet ano­ther first, the BCM4389 uti­li­zes Broadcom’s new tri-band simul­ta­neous (TBS) con­nec­ti­vi­ty archi­tec­tu­re to mobi­le devices. In addi­ti­on to two main Wi-Fi radi­os and a MIMO Blue­tooth radio, the BCM4389 incor­po­ra­tes a third ultra-low-power inde­pen­dent radio for opti­mi­zing Wi-Fi and Blue­tooth per­for­mance. The three-radio architecture:

• Enables always-on Blue­tooth dis­co­very for fas­ter pai­ring with access­ories and inter­fe­rence miti­ga­ti­on. Pho­nes and head­sets can now pair faster.
• Quick­ly scans for inter­fe­rence-free Wi-Fi net­works to con­nect to while main Wi-Fi radi­os pro­vi­de data, voice and video ser­vices. Pho­nes seam­less­ly switch to net­works with bet­ter Qua­li­ty-of-Ser­vice (QoS).
• Impro­ves indoor loca­ti­on accu­ra­cy with always-on scan­ning and litt­le impact on bat­tery life.
• Enables the BCM4389 to deli­ver up to five times bet­ter bat­tery uti­liza­ti­on than cur­rent flag­ship con­nec­ti­vi­ty solutions. 

The BCM4389 will bene­fit from a full eco­sys­tem of Wi-Fi 6E pro­ducts, inclu­ding home rou­ters, resi­den­ti­al gate­ways, enter­pri­se access points, and AR/VR devices. The new 6 GHz spec­trum band is expec­ted to be ope­ra­tio­nal in the United Sta­tes in 2020, and a wide ran­ge of 6 GHz enab­led devices will be available at launch.

“At Broad­com, we pri­de our­sel­ves in deli­ve­ring tech­no­lo­gy that defi­nes the mar­ket. The BCM4389, the world’s first Wi-Fi 6E mobi­le chip, is no excep­ti­on sin­ce it paves the way for our wire­less­ly con­nec­ted AR/VR future,” said Vijay Naga­ra­jan, vice pre­si­dent of mar­ke­ting for the Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons and Con­nec­ti­vi­ty Divi­si­on at Broad­com. “The BCM4389 deli­vers on the core advan­ta­ges of the 6 GHz band, mul­ti-giga­bit wire­less speeds and very low laten­cy. It also repres­ents a para­digm shift in wire­less design thin­king with tech­no­lo­gy that brings glitch-free audio expe­ri­ence with Blue­tooth head­sets, fast pai­ring with wire­less access­ories, accu­ra­te indoor loca­ti­on, high bat­tery effi­ci­en­cy and other ever­y­day con­su­mer experiences.”

“Wi-Fi 6E momen­tum is moving very quick­ly with regu­la­to­ry chan­ges expec­ted and chip­sets beco­ming available,” said Phil Solis, rese­arch direc­tor at IDC. “The­re are many video-rela­ted use cases that requi­re shorter ran­ges that fit per­fect­ly with the many lar­ge 160 MHz-wide chan­nels that the 6 GHz spec­trum band is capa­ble of supporting.”

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS

The BCM4389 is a smart­phone com­bo chip. Key fea­tures include:

• Sup­port for 2 streams of Wi-Fi 6E
• Mul­ti-Radio Blue­tooth 5 with anten­na beamforming
• Tri-Band Simul­ta­neous (TBS) archi­tec­tu­re inclu­ding a dedi­ca­ted back­ground scan radio
• Simul­ta­neous dual-band operation
• 2.63 Gbps PHY rate
• Ope­ra­ti­on in 2.4 GHz and 5.1–7.125 GHz unli­cen­sed band
• 160 MHz chan­nel bandwidth
• 1024-QAM modu­la­ti­on
• OFDMA
• MU-MIMO

QUOTES

“Wi-Fi 6E will levera­ge up to 1200 MHz of new unli­cen­sed spec­trum that can pro­vi­de seven uncon­ge­sted, non-over­lap­ping 160 MHz-wide chan­nels or fif­ty 20 MHz-wide chan­nels. The avai­la­bi­li­ty of such a lar­ge amount of con­ti­guous green­field spec­trum makes it pos­si­ble to deli­ver next-gen mobi­le appli­ca­ti­ons that requi­re high through­put, link relia­bi­li­ty, and low laten­cy in unli­cen­sed bands. Extre­me Net­works is exci­ted to work clo­se­ly with Broad­com, and plans to be among the first ven­dors to deli­ver end-to-end, cloud-dri­ven Wi-Fi 6E net­wor­king solu­ti­ons for the enter­pri­se.” — Eric Broock­man, CTO, Extre­me Networks.

“With the avai­la­bi­li­ty of up to 1.2GHz con­ti­guous unli­cen­sed spec­trum in the 6GHz band, the enhan­ced bene­fits of Wi-Fi 6 will be ful­ly rea­li­zed. The addi­ti­on of up to fif­ty 20MHz chan­nels in the 6GHz band, which is uncon­ge­sted and unen­cum­be­red by lega­cy tech­no­lo­gies, will result in fas­ter down­loads and lower laten­cy for mobi­le appli­ca­ti­ons. This is essen­ti­al as Wi-Fi con­ti­nues to be the pri­ma­ry mecha­nism for acces­sing the inter­net at home, work, and in enter­pri­ses that want full con­trol over their wire­less data and infra­struc­tures via AI-dri­ven ope­ra­ti­ons.” — Bob Fri­day, CTO and Co-foun­der of Mist, a Juni­per Company 

“At NETGEAR, we lead with inno­va­ti­on to deli­ver the latest most advan­ced smart net­wor­king pro­ducts to con­nect peo­p­le, power busi­nesses, and enhan­ce the way we live. We look for­ward to con­ti­nuing our long-stan­ding part­ner­ship with Broad­com to deli­ver the fas­test, most secu­re wire­less expe­ri­en­ces to NETGEAR cus­to­mers world­wi­de by lever­aging Wi-Fi 6E.” — David Hen­ry, Seni­or Vice Pre­si­dent of Con­nec­ted Home Pro­ducts, NETGEAR

About Broad­com

Broad­com Inc. (NASDAQ: AVGO) is a glo­bal tech­no­lo­gy lea­der that designs, deve­lo­ps and sup­pli­es a broad ran­ge of semi­con­duc­tor and infra­struc­tu­re soft­ware solu­ti­ons. Broadcom’s cate­go­ry-lea­ding pro­duct port­fo­lio ser­ves cri­ti­cal mar­kets inclu­ding data cen­ter, net­wor­king, enter­pri­se soft­ware, broad­band, wire­less, sto­rage and indus­tri­al. Our solu­ti­ons include data cen­ter net­wor­king and sto­rage, enter­pri­se, main­frame and cyber secu­ri­ty soft­ware focu­sed on auto­ma­ti­on, moni­to­ring and secu­ri­ty, smart­phone com­pon­ents, tele­coms and fac­to­ry auto­ma­ti­on. For more infor­ma­ti­on, go to www.broadcom.com.

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Press Cont­act:
Khanh Lam
Cor­po­ra­te Communications
press.relations@broadcom.com
Tele­pho­ne: +1 408 433 8649