Wolfson Microelectronics announces the WM2000, a low-power, high-quality receiver speaker driver with Wolfson myZone ambient noise cancellation (ANC) technology built in. Wolfson myZone is a new and revolutionary type of ambient noise cancellation technology that uses feed-forward, rather than the usual feedback systems, to provide up to 20 decibels (dB) of noise cancellation during a call. When applied to mobile phones, Wolfson's innovative ANC technology enables users to make calls in noisy environments and effortlessly be able to hear and concentrate on what is being said, resulting in fewer dropped calls.

Wolfson's myZone ANC technology has previously been deployed in leading headset designs, including those from Audio-Technica and Nokia, using a combination of discrete components and proprietary algorithms. The WM2000 represents the first single chip version of this technology, now delivering highly effective myZone noise cancellation for mobile phones, in the smallest and most cost-effective ANC solution on the market today.

Wolfson's WM2000 has been designed specifically to work in any handset platform design, regardless of form factor. The device is inserted between the output signal and the receiver circuit in the phone, with minimal architecture changes. Wolfson provides in-depth acoustic design support and component recommendations to ensure optimal noise cancellation performance.

While there are many technologies addressing the challenges of transmit path noise reduction for improved call intelligibility, myZone ANC applies active ambient noise cancellation to improve the user receive experience. It does this successfully and effectively without artificially boosting parts of the receive path frequency spectrum. It can do this across a wide noise cancellation bandwidth, from 300 Hz to 2.5 kHz, and delivers up to 20 dB of typical ambient noise reduction. The WM2000 offers significant improvements in intelligibility in noisy environments making the difference between having an intelligible conversation or not.

Wolfson myZone ANC is highly power efficient, only switching on when required, reducing power consumption and increasing battery life. When noise cancellation is enabled the WM2000 adds 20 mW to a voice call and on standby power is 8 microW.

Availability and pricing:
The WM2000 is sampling now to customers in a CSP25 package and is priced at $3.50 in volumes of 1000.