IHS has identified a radio frequency microelectromechanical system (RF MEMS) device in a new Samsung cellphone.
This could be a breakthrough design in for the RF MEMS technology in a mass market handset.
Samsung’s Focus Flash Windows smartphone includes an RF MEMS device from WiSpry, according to the IHS iSuppli Teardown Service.
The cellphone has been shipping in the US since November.
According to IHS, this will pave the way for other cellphones to adopt RF MEMS, causing global sales of such devices to rise to $150m in 2015, up from just $720,000 in 2011.
RF MEMS have been considered for volume mobile phone designs are as long as a decade.
“Although they have been shipping since 2005 in low volume for instrumentation applications, interest among cellphone makers in the use of RF MEMS didn’t pick up until mid-2010, when users began to report problems with signal reception with the iPhone 4 after they held the device in certain ways," said Jérémie Bouchaud, senior principal analyst. MEMS and sensors for IHS.
"This so-called “death grip” problem can be alleviated through the use RF MEMS. When combined with the other benefits delivered by RF MEMS, the market for these parts is set for rapid growth in the coming years,” said Bouchaud.
The IHS teardown of the Focus Flash revealed a MEMS-based antenna tuning module labeled A2101 in a die‐on‐LGA package near the antenna connectors.
The tunable impedance match (TIM) device, as WiSpry calls it, consists of a network of inductors combined with WiSpry’s CMOS-integrated, digitallytunable and low‐loss MEMS capacitors.
The WiSpry single‐chip design integrates logic circuits/serial interface for control, on‐board high‐voltage charge pump and high-voltage MEMS drivers, together with fully encapsulated digital MEMS capacitors on a single chip.