Austriamicrosystems is shipping its AS3654 power management chip for XM Satellite Radio’s personal satellite radio devices.

The AS3654 handles power monitoring and battery management as well as charging. It integrates specific functions such as clock, reset and interrupt generation, voltage and temperature monitoring. The AS3654 power management chip is an ultra-flexible, highly integrated smart power management unit that includes voltage regulators, a lighting unit, step down battery charger, a stereo audio DAC, housekeeping functions and an audio amplifier featuring sophisticated ground noise cancellation required for car radio applications.

Sounds like more goodies for CES 2006..

Agere Systems, the chip supplier to Sirius, has recently filed for a patent to create a repeater device that broadcasts over a wireless local area network (WLAN). The idea would be to receive the satellite signal, and reformat the bitstream received to deliver over WiFi to any number of receivers.

The patent reads like Agere is working on a simple way to allow for dependable interior listening of satellite radio. The big deal about this is that Agere will not be simply repeating one channel, the repeater would include "a plurality of channels" and then leave it up to the individual receiver to choose the channel.

This could be great for Sirius if WiFi receivers were built into their new devices. Businesses definitely would find this very useful. You could theoretically listen to satellite on your laptop, or setup "Sirius HotSpots" - gyms could rebroadcast Sirius to receivers built into treadmills.

Thanks Junior!