RTL8188CEBT
Combo mini-Card User Manual
1 Rev.1.0
1. General Description
1.1. RTL8188CE
The Realtek 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-GR provides simple legacy and 20MHz/40MHz co-existence
mechanisms to ensure backward and network compatibility.
1.2. BlueCore4-ROM
CSR BlueCore4-ROM is a single-chip radio and baseband IC for Bluetooth 2.4GHz systems including
enhanced data rates (EDR) to 3Mbps. With the on-chip CSR Bluetooth software stack it provides a fully
compliant Bluetooth system to v2.1 of the specification for data and voice communications.
