A low power chipset for portable multimedia applications

Future terminals will allow users untethered access to multimedia information servers that are interconnected through high-bandwidth network backbones. This paper describes a chipset for such a terminal, to transmit audio and pen input from the user to the network on a wireless uplink and to receive audio, text/graphics and compressed video from the backbone on the down link. The portability requirement results in the primary design focus on power reduction. Six chips provide the interface between a high-speed digital radio modem and a commercial speech codec, pen input circuitry, and LCD panels for text/graphics and full-motion video display. The chips provide protocol conversion, synchronization, error correction, packetization, buffering, video decompression, and D/A conversion at power consumption less than 5 mW.<>