The development situation of WiFi chip in internet of things era

                In the trend of internet of things , in year 2015 , WiFi chip ushered in the first explosive rise , the total shipment exceeding 30 million units , which was three times of that in year 2014 . With the starting volume of intelligent hardware , it is expected that the shipment in year 2016 will be highly raised to 100 million units.

                 Developing  from multi chip to single chip , internal and external WiFi chip manufacturers play games .

                Actually , in the products of mobile phone , and other products , independent WiFi chip  having  only  the function of connecting and transferring single processing and transmission protocol TCP/ IP must be  placed at the end of AP having strong performance , so that it can form a complete communication architecture . However , a lot of intelligent  hardware in the field of internet of things , such as kettle , electric rice cooker , lamps and lanterns , soybean milk machine  etc  , have no powerful AP  originally . Therefore , independent WiFi chip of course have difficulty .

                 Then this demand first expedites birth to a group of companies solving problems by overall scheme , such as Qingke , Bolian , Jiangfeng , Youren science and technology  . They solve the problems by single chips externally hanging MCU , then writing communication protocol TCP/ IP into MCU to provide service for the intelligent upgrade of the traditional enterprises .

                 For a long period of time , a single chip WiFi hanging outside MCU almost rule the wireless connecting market in internet of things . However , due to the high cost of the scheme , the cost control of traditional home appliance industry nearly goes to the extreme . If  adding WiFi scheme to it ,an additional burden will occur , which is not beneficial to the promotion of internet of things in the society . Then , driven by the huge demand in internet of things , big international chip design manufacturers began to integrate MCU with WiFi to reduce the chip area and cut down the cost of chip scheme ( now the module price is about 9 Yuan ) , the most typical representative of which are Qualcomms Atheros 4004 T1 CC 3200 , Real tek 8711 etc . On the other hand , the domestic chip design companies are unwilling to lag behind . MTK launched MT 768 and  South Silicon Valley launched Lexin 8266, whose performance are not inferior to those of domestic manufacturers  , whose prices have more advantages and whose service is more comprehensive ,is quickly pushed to the applying market of internet of things .

                       It can be predicted under the situation in which so many chip design manufacturers go into , the WiFi chip market in year 2016 will become more boisterous . The gambling and competition among big manufacturers will become unprecedentedly fierce and at the same time attract more chip manufacturers to continue to follow up .

                    Three elements of WiFi chip core technology : system , power consumption and radio frequency .

                     The participation in of many chip design companies enriched the kind of WiFi chip  in the market and meanwhile made the market intermingled with the good and bad , then how can the clients choose suitable chips ? The difficulty points of WiFi chip design being the key factors to measure whether WiFi chips are bad or good , lie in the factors such as stability  , liability to develop ,low power consumption of the chip and the stability of radio frequency continuity .

                  The WiFi chip software system of each company is developed based on RTOS having its own way to achieve in the standard TCP/IP protocol , which also requires enterprises  to have the strong ability of software design system in addition to the ability of the hardware design , providing stable performance of the system , series of API and the complete packed SDK to facilitate customers product development on this basis . Most of the RF are analog circuits . They first have high technical requirements for the engineers technology . If there is any deviation in voltage and current , continuous instability may occur in WiFi . Second , considering the complex environment factors , there are high requirements for sensitivity and transmission power .

                  In most of the internet of things , for example , unmanned aerial  vehicles , robot, WiFi speakers and so on , have high demand for power consumption of the whole machine . Household electrical applications have very high demand for power consumption . Especially in export , the overall power consumption requirements are very strict and the power consumption which the device itself can reduce almost goes to extremes , so the WiFi chip power consumption can not become an additional burden .

                  The future development trend of WiFi chip : segmentation customization , security integration and  dispersed intelligence .

                   The fragmentation in internet of things market results in large differences existing in the application of market segmentation . The needs of WiFi chip customization would become increasingly obvious . For example , Quanzhi at CES launched G102 chip , which is the worlds first single special WiFi speakers chip . Smartchip microelectronics also launched GKM 910 chip  aiming at satisfying the needs for theater speaker wireless connection .