Adding Wireless to Your Product?

There are generally two options:

Option 1: Use a wireless system-on-a-chip (SoC) directly on the product printed circuit board (PCB). A fully-integrated SoC has RF, analog and digital circuitry, and a microcontroller (MCU) on an easy to use, inexpensive integrated circuit.

• Why use one? It’s smaller and cheaper than a wireless module.
• Why not? There are lots of unknowns of designing it into a product. 

Option 2: Use a wireless module. It includes the same wireless SoC as Option 1, but most are fully characterized products, including RF and shielding, timing components (crystals), external bill of materials (BOM), regulatory approvals, and standards bodies’ certifications.

• Why use one? It removes the unknowns of a wireless SoC.
• Why not? They are bigger and more expensive than a wireless SoC.

There is a point in each product’s life when an “on-board” solution might make sense to save money. But it’s not always obvious, or tied to volume. Even the Apple iPhone 6 uses a Wi-Fi module instead of an SoC and it has shipped something close to 200 million units. Why?

Six Hidden Costs to Using an SoC

The answer may be one of the six hidden costs to using an SoC that every product development company needs to consider. Check out more detail of the summary bullets in this whitepaper.

• RF Engineers – A company needs RF engineering expertise, or access to it, if they’re using RF on their PCBs. RF can be very tricky and RF engineers are expensive. Glassdoor.com estimates they cost $80-150K/year without benefits or overhead.

• Lab Equipment and Facilities – Owning and equipping an RF lab is also expensive because it’s fundamentally required to do RF development.

• PCB Layout and Antenna Selection – Even with RF engineers and lab equipment, getting the RF done correctly takes time. There is generally very good advice in RF Application Notes like AN930 for Bluetooth Smart. But it can be hard even when following these documents very carefully.

• Regulatory Approvals and Wireless Standard Certifications – All wireless products in the unlicensed bands must be approved by various governments and standards bodies. Each certification costs money and can take multiple tries. They may even cause delays or product redesigns. Modules generally come with these certifications already in place.

• Reduced Product Revenue from TTM Delays – All of the above can add up to product delays. If a product misses its target window, or if competing product beats it to market, the revenue projections can fall, reducing the target ROI.

• Supply Management and Assurance – And of course, once a product is in the market it must have supply. If a company is using a module, it’s a single ordering part number with a the buying power of a consolidated module customer base. If it’s an SoC design, there are lots of components and supply may be an issue.

It’s not easy to predict all the reasons it might make sense to use a module over an SoC, or when the right time to switch to an SoC might be.

In fact, some companies have many products in production that use either an SoC or a module. When companies use modules and SoCs for the same functionality, they often use the same supplier for both so their software is portable between both types of designs. They can also be sure their support will be consistent for both products.

Silicon Labs offers both wireless SoCs like the wireless Geckos announced at Embedded World 2016, and modules that incorporate them. The software for them is portable, and both are supported by our world-class applications teams making it easy to move from modules to SoCs when the time is right.

Check out Silicon Labs Wireless Solutions.

Check out Silicon Labs Bluetooth Solutions.

Check out the whitepaper on hidden costs of SoCs.