To Buy or Not to Buy? Are Ready-Made RF Systems Right For You?

By Mike Hutton
AeroComm, Inc.

Wireless technology is growing up, providing OEMs with lucrative opportunities in almost any industry you can think of. Because of recent technological advances, OEMs can now offer RF products that make it easier, faster, and more cost-effective for their customers to deliver information and services. Retailers are using mobile Point of Sale devices to process credit card transactions. Airports and hotels rely on wireless signs to inform their customers of changing rates and/or schedules. Sports facilities use wireless scoreboards to update game-day scores and statistics. Trucking companies depend on RF systems to more rapidly input maintenance and cargo data, and auto makers and dealerships use RF devices to input and retrieve diagnostic data.

However, these opportunities are not without challenges, and OEMs must choose whether to build or buy the wireless radios used in their products. They must decide whether to do it themselves by staffing up, adding infrastructure, and undergoing the rigorous certification needed to produce RF devices or choose to put their trust in an RF manufacturer who will do this for them. Increasingly, OEMs must weigh the cost, performance, and time-to-market tradeoffs of each approach -- a decision made more complex by the advent of RF chipsets.

Priced on average at $3 – $5, these chips may, at first glance, appear more attractive than buying a comparable $20 radio. According to chipmakers, OEMs with a modicum of in-house RF design expertise can simply glue the chip on a circuit board to bring the product to market. For short-range, remote control operations that require a single frequency, minimal protocols, huge volumes, and little intelligence (e.g. keyless entry devices or garage door openers), building the RF component is both viable and economical. However, for intelligent applications where data must be accurately and rapidly exchanged, using a chipset to develop an RF system is like trying to make a PC from scratch using just a microprocessor. It leaves out too many critical variables.

Click here to download the complete article in PDF format.