Quectel MC60 has been a very very popular 2G modem, especially in India. I have seen so many products like Vehicle trackers, and other IoT products built on top of this Cellular Modem.
As 2G cellular services are still available, many companies are continuing to manufacturer their products using this module but no one is building a new product using them.
The main processor used in the module is MT2503, It’s a highly integrated SoC from MediaTek MT2503
MT2503 SoC is a part of the MediaTek MT2502 family of products. The MT2503 is an ultra-small, highly integrated chip that contains a Dual-mode Bluetooth and built-in 2G modem. It has a single core ARMv7 processor running at Max. CPU frequency of 260Mhz with integrated memory (RAM and Flash). It has inbuilt GPS support for BeiDou, Galileo, GPS+GLONASS.
PMIC is also inbuilt so inductors and capacitors off-chip are used for the DC-DC converter to generate various power supplies.
Other than that, you will see a lot of very small size passives and and some crystals on the Quectel MC60 module.
The Quectel MC60 module has another large RF Chipset, that is RF7198. It forms the physical RF layer of the Modem.
Qorvo’s RF7198 is a quad-band GSM850/GSM900/DCS1800/PCS1900 Tx module. The RF7198 is a complete high-power, high-efficiency transmit module for low-cost quad-band GSM/GPRS mobile handsets.
Power Amplifier, Power Controller and Switch functionality have been implemented on a single standard CMOS die.
That’s all in this teardown. I hope you found it interesting.
See you in my next blog soon.
I am currently working as an embedded systems design consultant helping companies build custom embedded products and develop test automation solutions for their PCBs.
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