TRENDNET RTL8188CE User Manual

RTL8188CE

miniCard User’s Manual

Rev. 1.0

03 Dec 2009

COPYRIGHT

©2009, All rights reserved TRENDnet,. 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 TRENDnet Inc.

DISCLAIMER

TRENDnet provides this document “as is”, without warranty of any kind, neither expressed nor implied, including,
but not limited to, the particular purpose. TRENDnet 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

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

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 TRENDnet
representative for additional information that may help in the development process.

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Table of Contents

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

2. FEATURES...........................................................................................................................................................................2

3. BLOCK DIAGRAM................... .................................... .. ..................................... ..............................................................3

4. PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS..........................................................................................................................................4

4.1. MINI PCI EXPRESS PIN ASSIGNMENT..............................................................................................................................4

4.2. MECHANICAL..................................................................................................................................................................5

4.3. ENVIRONMENTAL............................................................................................................................................................5

4.3.1. Operating...............................................................................................................................................................5

4.3.2. Storage....................................................................................................................................................................5

4.4. FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS.........................................................................................................................................5

4.5. WARNING........................................................................................................................................................................6

4.5.1 Federal Communication Commission Interference Statement......................................................................................6

4.5.2 Industry Canada Statement..........................................................................................................................................8

4.5.3 NCC警語......................................................................................................................................................................9

List of Tables

TABLE 1. MINI PCI EXPRESS PIN ASSIGNMENT............................................................................................................................4

TABLE 2. FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS.......................................................................................................................................5

List of Figures

FIGURE 1. RTL8188CE MINICARD APPLICATION DIAGRAM........................................................................................................3

FIGURE 2. RTL8188CE MINICARD MECHANICAL SPECIFICATION................................................................................................5

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1. General Description

The TRENDnet RTL8188CE is a highly integrated single-chip Wireless LAN (WLAN) controller compatible with
the IEEE 802.11n specification. It combines a MAC, a 1T1R capable baseband, and RF in a single chip. The
RTL8188CE provides a complete solution for a high-performance wireless client.

The RTL8188CE baseband implements Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) with one transmit and one receive path (1T1R). Features include one spatial stream
transmission, short Guard Interval (GI) of 400ns, spatial spreading, and support for both 20MHz and 40MHz
channel bandwidth.

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, and CCK
provides support for legacy data rates, 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, provide higher data rates of 54Mbps and 150Mbps
for IEEE 802.11g and 802.11n OFDM respectively.

The RTL8188CE builds in an enhanced signal detector, an adaptive frequency domain equalizer, and a
soft-decision Viterbi decoder to alleviate severe multi-path effects and mutual interference in the reception of
multiple streams. Robust interference detection and suppression are provided to protect against Bluetooth, cordless
phone, and microwave oven interference.

Efficient IQ-imbalance, DC offset, phase noise, frequency offset, and timing offset compensations are provided for
the radio frequency front-end. Selectable digital transmit and receive FIR filters are provided to meet transmit
spectrum mask requirements and to reject adjacent channel interference, respectively.

The RTL8188CE supports fast receiver Automatic Gain Control (AGC) with synchronous and asynchronous
control loops among antennas, antenna diversity functions, and adaptive transmit power control functions to obtain
better performance in the analog portions of the transceiver.

The RTL8188CE 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, and APSD, reduces
power wasted during idle time, and compensates for the extra power required to transmit OFDM. The RTL8188CE
provides simple legacy and 20MHz/40MHz co-existence mechanisms to ensure backward and network
compatibility.

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Rev.1.0