RF Front-End Control

Charter

The MIPI RF Front-End Control Working Group, formed in 2008, defines and maintains interface solutions for RF front-end components and modules. It is chartered to develop a highly efficient but flexible control interface that meets current and future market needs, enables higher bandwidths, and combines available techniques to reduce fragmentation of RF front-end interfaces while remaining cost-effective for manufacturers.

Industry Need

The working group was formed to address the lack of an open standard for controlling RF front-end devices; increasingly complex radio front-end architectures that often incorporate as many as 20 components that are each controlled by dedicated interface solutions to meet very rigorous performance requirements; and lack of interoperability among components supplied by different manufacturers, which increases the number of pins required in a design and implementation costs.

Accomplishments

The MIPI RF Front-End Control Interface developed by the working group, now available as v3.0, simplifies design, configuration and integration of RF front-end devices, including power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, antenna tuners, filters, switches and others. It reduces the costs of these components and makes it easier for manufacturers to address end-user needs for faster data speeds. It can be used to develop scalable solutions and expedite time to market for new solutions in a wide range of industries, including the mobile sector and mobile-influenced vertical industries such as automotive and IoT.

The group is very active, working continually to enhance the radio front-end interface specification to address emerging 5G, IOT and carrier aggregation requirements.

Focus

The MIPI RF Front-End Working Group has worked to develop a highly efficient, flexible and extensible interface that can accommodate many variations in the overlying system design, while providing interoperability at the interface level between compliant RFICs and front-end modules.