CSR, a chipset design lab in Cambridge that specialises in radio, has released a voice over WiFi design (UniVox) which a bill of materials of around £11.00.
The reference design utilises CSR’s UniFi-1 Portable chip which supports 802.11b and g, while also supporting various security protocols such as 802.11i, WEP, WPA and WPA2. The design also incorporates CSR’s MAP (Multimedia Applications Processor) which is a RISC CPU which has DSP (digital signal processing) capability that allows it to support QoS (quality of service), various codecs, echo suppressions and intelligent power management.
A system built using the platform and a standard 1500mAh battery should support talk times of 8 hours and 250 hours standby time. Using WMM-PS (which requires an access point that also supports WMM-PS) talk time is extended to 40 hours and standby to 400 hours.
Both SIP (version 2) and IAX2 (Inter Asterisk Protocol v2) are supported. IAX is useful in NAT environments as it can traverse NAT without any special software, while SIP can be a complete headache.
If the chip is adopted, a multitude of new, very affordable handsets could soon hit the market further increasing the penetration of VoIP.