Technology

Recognizing G2 Microsystems unique offering and its alignment with the customers of Roving Networks, Roving acquired G2 in April 2010.

G2's silicon is configured into three distinct domains. As expected there is an RF domain used when actual Wi-Fi related communication is required, next to that is the digital domain comprising of a 32 bit RISC microcontroller and true 802.11 b/g MAC*. Finally, the silicon offers a third domain controlled/monitored by a programmable state machine. This third domain can remain awake while the rest of the system sleeps. This domain can be programmed to wake the other regions depending on certain conditions that may occur on any of its 10 I/O, 8 ADC's (14 bit), RFID reader, MAG reader or timers.

The G2 silicon is supported by Roving's in house API called 'WiFly'. WiFly allows access to many of the features available in the G2 silicon without the need for customers to manipulate registers within the chip. The API provides a very simple interface for the customer, functions that may call on many register updates can be called in a simple command; example 'scan'. The Scan command automatically checks for any access points available on the available W-Fi channels, more information on the WiFly API can be found in the WiFly user guide.

*(Note: Often Wi-Fi vendors will claim a `b` rate radio to be `b/g` compatible, but this is not true and data rates can only reach a maximum of 11Mbit/s restricting the network, G2's solution offers up to true `G` rates without hindering network speeds)