PHY (chip) - Example Uses

Example Uses

• Wi-Fi: The PHY portion consists of the RF, mixed-signal and analog portions, that are often called transceivers, and the digital baseband portion that place high demand on the digital signal processing (DSP) and communication algorithm processing, including channel codes. It is common that these PHY portions are integrated with the media access control (MAC) layer in System-on-a-chip (SOC) implementations. Other similar wireless applications are 3G/4G/LTE, WiMAX, UWB, etc.
• Ethernet: A PHY chip (PHYceiver) is commonly found on Ethernet devices. Its purpose is physical, analog signal access to the link. It is usually used in conjunction with an Media Independent Interface (MII) chip or interfaced to a microcontroller that takes care of the higher layer functions.
• Universal Serial Bus (USB): A PHY chip is integrated into most USB controllers in hosts or embedded systems and provides the bridge between the digital and modulated parts of the interface.
• IrDA: The Infrared Data Associations (IrDA) specification includes an IrPHY specification for the physical layer of the data transport.
• Serial ATA (SATA): Serial ATA controllers like the VIA Technologies VT6421 use a PHY.
• SDRAM chip interfaces
• Flash memory chip interfaces