Product category:
Communications ICs (Wireless)
News Release from: Frontier Silicon | Subject: Apollo
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 14 February 2005
Tuner chip enables digital multimedia
broadcasting
Frontier Silicon has launched its first tuner chip for digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) applications.
Frontier Silicon has launched its first tuner chip for digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) applications The new Apollo chip is a state-of-the-art RF front-end device that enables Frontier Silicon to offer a complete low-cost solution for audio, video and data broadcasting to mobile phones and other mobile devices when combined with the company's Kino T-DMB digital baseband processor
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 7 Jun 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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Chipset moves Frontier into digital TV market
Frontier Silicon now offers a complete RF and baseband chip solution for mobile digital television.
Details of Apollo's underlying technology platform, suitable for delivering T-DMB as well as future DVB-H products, were presented for the first time last week at the ISSCC conference in San Francisco.
The tuner chip will be demonstrated in a live terrestrial DMB (T-DMB) solution at the 3GSM World Congress this week (Hall 5, Stand M53, Cannes, France).
Apollo is the smallest RF tuner for T-DMB currently available, measuring only 0.9 x 5 x 5mm, and offers a power consumption better than 80mW, almost one-quarter of competing receivers.
The small sise and low power consumption make it ideal for designing into mobile handsets intended for T-DMB (digital video broadcasting) products.
A power save feature in Apollo allows the receiver to be put in standby, bringing the average power consumption down to 50mW; this capability is enabled through a software feature in the digital baseband T-DMB chip.
In designing Apollo, Frontier Silicon's design engineers overcame the major challenge in designing a zero IF receiver, DC offsets.
A near-zero IF architecture combines the robust reception of traditional superheterodyne receivers with the high integration of direct conversion zero IF.
Apollo has three separate low noise amplifiers at its front end for L band, band 3 and band 2.
These are multiplexed into a common automatic gain control (AGC) amplifier and mixers to produce a near-zero IF of 1.024MHz; this results in the image response being put in the adjacent channel, reducing the image rejection required.
After on-chip filtering and up-conversion to the industry standard 2.048MHz IF, the signal amplitude is adjusted and fed to the baseband chip.
The Apollo chip is manufactured in a 0.35um SiGe BiCMOS process to give low power consumption with excellent performance over the -45 to +85C temperature range.
The chip is available now.
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