Realtek Semiconductor RTL8191SU User Manual

RTL8191SU

PCI-Express miniCard User’s Manual

Rev. 1.0

11 Sep 2009

Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

No. 2, Innovation Road II, Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan
Tel.: [phone]. Fax: [phone]
www.realtek.com.tw

RTL8191SU

COPYRIGHT

©2009 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced,
transmitted, transcribed, stored in a retrieval system, or translated into any language in any form or by any
means without the written permission of Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

DISCLAIMER

Realtek provides this document “as is”, without warranty of any kind, neither expressed nor implied,
including, but not limited to, the particular purpose. Realtek may make improvements and/or changes in
this document or in the product described in this document at any time. This document could include
technical inaccuracies or typographical errors.

TRADEMARKS

Realtek is a trademark of Realtek Semiconductor Corporation. Other names mentioned in this document are
trademarks/registered trademarks of their respective owners.

User’s Manual

USING THIS DOCUMENT

This document is intended for the software engineer’s reference and provides detailed programming
information.

Though every effort has been made to ensure that this document is current and accurate, more information
may have become available subsequent to the production of this guide. In that event, please contact your
Realtek representative for additional information that may help in the development process.

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Table of Contents

1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION................................................................................................................................................4

2. GENERAL FEATURES......................................................................................................................................................5

3. PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS..........................................................................................................................................8

3.1. MINI PCI EXPRESS PIN ASSIGNMENT..............................................................................................................................8

3.2. MECHANICAL..................................................................................................................................................................9

3.3. ENVIRONMENTAL ............................................................................................................................................................9

3.3.1. Operating ...............................................................................................................................................................9

3.3.2. Storage....................................................................................................................................................................9

3.4. FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS.........................................................................................................................................9

3.5. WARNING........................................................................................................................................................................9

4.5.1 Federal Communication Commission Interference Statement......................................................................................9

4.5.2 INDUSTRY CANADA STATEMENT................................................................................12

4.5.3 NCC 警語..........................................................................................................................................................13

List of Tables

TABLE 1. MINI PCI EXPRESS PIN ASSIGNMENT ............................................................................................................................8

TABLE 2. FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS .......................................................................................................................................9

List of Figures

FIGURE 2. RTL8191SU MINICARD MECHANICAL SPECIFICATION................................................................................................9

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1. General Description

The Realtek RTL8191SU is a highly integrated single-chip MIMO wireless LAN (WLAN) solution for the
wireless high throughput 802.11n draft specification. It combines a MAC, a 1T2R capable baseband, and
RF in a single chip. The RTL8191SU provides complete solution for a high throughput performance
wireless client.

The RTL8191SU baseband implements multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) with 1 transmit and 2 receive paths and is compatible with 802.11n Draft
specification 2.0. Other features include one spatial streams transmission, up to two spatial streams
reception, short guard interval (GI) of 400ns, spatial spreading, and transmission over 20 MHz and 40 MHz
bandwidth. At the receiver, extended range and good minimum sensitivity is achieved by having receiver
diversity up to 2 antennas.

For legacy compatibility, direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), complementary code keying (CCK)
and OFDM baseband processing are included to support all IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g data rates.
Differential phase shift keying modulation schemes, DBPSK and DQPSK with data scrambling capability,
are available along with complementary code keying to provide the data rates of 1, 2, 5.5 and 11Mbps with
long or short preamble. The high speed FFT/IFFT paths, combined with BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, and
64QAM modulation of the individual subcarriers and rate compatible punctured convolutional coding with
coding rate of 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, and 5/6, provides the maximum data rate of 54 Mbps and 300 Mbps for IEEE

802.11g and 802.11n MIMO OFDM respectively.

The RTL8191SU builds in an enhanced signal detector, an adaptive frequency domain equalizer, and a
soft-decision Viterbi decoder to alleviate the severe multi-path effects and mutual interference in the
reception of multiple streams. For better detection quality, receive diversity with maximal-ratio-combine
(MRC) applying up to 2 receive paths are implemented. Robust interference detection and suppression are
provided to protect against bluetooth, cordless phone, and microwave oven. Receive vector diversity for
multi-stream application is implemented for efficient utilization of MIMO channel. Efficient IQ-imbalance,
DC offset, phase noise, frequency offset and timing offset compensations are provided for the radio
frequency front-end impairments. Selectable digital transmit and receiver FIR filters are provided to meet
the requirement of transmit spectrum mask and to reject the adjacent channel interference, respectively.

The RTL8191SU supports fast receiver automatic gain control (AGC) with synchronous and asynchronous
control loops among antennas, antenna diversity functions, and adaptive transmit power control function to
obtain the better performance in the analog portions of the transceiver.

The RTL8191SU MAC supports 802.11e for multimedia applications, 802.11i for security, and 802.11n for
enhanced MAC protocol efficiency. Using packet aggregation techniques such as A-MPDU with BA and
A-MSDU, protocol efficiency is significantly improved. Power saving mechanisms such as U-APSD,
APSD, and MIMO power saving reduces the power wasted during idle time, and compensates for the extra
power required to transmit MIMO OFDM. The RTL8191SU provides simple legacy and 20Mhz/40Mhz
co-existence mechanisms to ensure backward and network compatibility.

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2. General Features

General

• 64-pin QFN

• CMOS MAC, Baseband MIMO PHY, and RF Single Chip for IEEE 802.11b/g/n compatible WLAN

• Complete 802.11n MIMO solution for 2.4GHz band

• 1x2 MIMO technology for extended reception robustness and exceptional throughput

• Maximum Tx/Rx PHY data rate up to 75M/150Mbps using 20Mhz bandwidth, 150M/300Mbps using

40Mhz bandwidth

• Compatible with 802.11n draft 2.0 specification

• Backward compatible with 802.11b/g devices while operating at 802.11n data rates

Host Interface

• Complies with PCI Express™ Base Specification Revision 1.1

Standards supported

• 802.11e QoS Enhancement (WMM, WMM-SA Client mode)

• 802.11h TPC, Spectrum Measurement

• 802.11k Radio Resource Measurement

• 802.11i (WPA, WPA2). Open, shared key, and pair-wise key authentication services

• Cisco Compatible Extensions (CCX) for WLAN devices

MAC Features

• Frame aggregation increase MAC efficiency (A-MSDU, A-MPDU)

• Low latency Immediate High-Throughput Block Acknowledgement (HT-BA)

• Long NAV for media reservation with CF-End for NAV release

• PHY-level spoofing to enhance legacy compatibility

• MIMO power saving mechanism

• Channel management and co-existence

• Multiple BSSID feature allowing RTL8191SU to assume multiple MAC identity when used as

wireless bridge

• Supports Wake-On-WLAN via Magic Packet and wake-up frame

• TXOP SIFS bursting guarantees multimedia bandwidth

5 Rev.1.0