The market for smart home devices has grown tremendously since the first introduction of Amazon Alexa devices.

Smart hubs have also grown to be a big industry with Google and Apple introducing their own versions and many others looking to compete in a highly competitive market. 5G is the latest incarnation of smart hubs where instead of using traditional broadband technologies like cable, fiber, DSL or satellite, the smart home device uses cellular technology like what is used on smartphones.

The reason that these smart hubs can compete with the speeds of cable and fiber is due to the next generation cellular technology 5G, which is about 10 times faster than the previous technology while also increasing latency time and bandwidth. As 5G cellular continues to improve with new technologies enabling even faster download speeds, fixed wireless access is likely to become a larger player in the home internet sector.

TCL’s LinkHub 5G is one of the latest incarnations of the smart home hub from the supplier with a 5G subsystem and SDRAM memory among other electronic components.

The following is a partial deep dive into the TCL LinkHub conducted by TechInsights.

Summary

• 1 GB LPDDR4 SDRAM
• 5G subsystem
• Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modules

Released: June 2021

Price: $350

Availability: Worldwide

Target market: IT/consumer

Main board

The main board consists of all the electronic components that are used to power the device outside of the connectivity board. These components include:

• Silergy’s step-down DC-DC converter and DC-DC converter
• WDSemi’s high voltage ringing SLIC protection
• SGMicro’s two-bit bidirectional voltage-level translator
• RealTek’s gigabit Ethernet transceiver
• MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.0 transceiver and 4x4 MIMO Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.0 SoC
• Microsemi’s mlSLIC line interface

(Learn more about Wi-Fi chips on Globalspec.com)

5G board

The 5G communication module consists of the main board needing to connect to cellular connection in the smart home hub from TCL. The components include:

• Jeju Semiconductor’s multichip memory 1GB SLC NAND flash
• Qualcomm’s SAW filter
• Qorvo’s quadplexor, LNA with switch, power amplifier, RF switch and front-end module
• Murata’s SAW filter and duplexer
• Skyworks’ UHB LTE and 5G new radio front-end module and power amplifier controller
• MediaTek’s LNA RF switch and power management IC

(Learn more about cellular chips on Globalspec.com)

Major components

• $91.79 — 5G communication subsystem — Fibocom (Qty: 1)
• $13.51 — 4x4 MIMO Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.0 SoC — MediaTek (Qty: 1)
• $3.19 — Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.0 transceiver — MediaTek (Qty: 1)
• $3.19 — Wi-Fi 6/Bluetooth 5.0 transceiver — MediaTek (Qty: 1)
• $2.66 — Main frame (Qty: 1)
• $2.50 — 6-layer conventional FR4 (Qty: 1)
• $2.03 — Small passive capacitor (Qty: 507)
• $1.96 — Heat sink #2 (Qty: 1)
• $1.65 — Heat sink #1 (Qty: 1)
• $1.20 — Oscillator (Qty: 2)