Radio-on-a-chip or RoC systems are single-chip devices that incorporate a receiver, an amplifier, and power management

Power management

Power management is a feature of some electrical appliances, especially copiers, computers and computer peripherals such as monitors and printers, that turns off the power or switches the system to a low-power state when inactive. In computing this is known as PC power management and is built...

 into a single chip, which can thus be embedded into very small or even portable electronics.

Of all System-on-a-chip

System-on-a-chip

A system on a chip or system on chip is an integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio-frequency functions—all on a single chip substrate...

 implementations, RoC holds some of the greatest promise for computer networks, due to the chip's ability to act as a Wireless access point

Wireless access point

In computer networking, a wireless access point is a device that allows wireless devices to connect to a wired network using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or related standards...

. It has been suggested that these devices could solve the problem of the last mile

Last mile

The "last mile" or "last kilometer" is the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer. The phrase is therefore often used by the telecommunications and cable television industries. The actual distance of this leg may be considerably more than a mile,...

, since any area with reasonably high population density would have a plethora of nearby access points.