Product category:
Communications ICs (Wireless)
News Release from: Zarlink Semiconductor | Subject: ZL10039
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 08 August 2005
Free-to-air tuner comes down to one chip
A new device is billed as the industry's first single-chip satellite tuner for free-to-air satellite DTV receivers.
Zarlink Semiconductor has launched the ZL10039 device, the industry's first single-chip satellite tuner for free-to-air (FTA) satellite DTV receivers Combined with Zarlink's ZL10313 satellite demodulator, the ZL10039 direct conversion tuner offers the most integrated and cost-effective front-end solution for the FTA satellite market
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 7 Feb 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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The new tuner includes a high-performance low-noise amplifier (LNA), eliminating the need for additional RF circuitry.
Together with the ZL10313 demodulator and supported by the ZLE10541 front-end reference design, satellite set-top box STB (set-top box) manufacturers can now achieve the performance required by FTA receivers directly on the motherboard - a cost-effective design approach that has been used in the pay-TV market for several years.
This design can save over 5% of the total receiver hardware BOM costs.
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With the ZL10039 satellite tuner, Zarlink strengthens its leadership position in front-end solutions for digital receivers.
Zarlink's chips are designed into FTA and subscriber-based digital satellite systems worldwide.
Satellite was the first digital TV delivery mechanism to achieve worldwide adoption, and still leads in volume, with over 30 million shipments predicted for 2006.
Deployments in China and India are continuing to drive demand.
Unlike the pay-TV market, where the quality of installation and signal strength is consistently good, the FTA market offers more difficult conditions.
The quality of the signal components (dish, cable, connectors) and the installation can be poor, resulting in unacceptable levels of signal attenuation.
To address this, and to maximise the number of channels that can be captured, FTA manufacturers typically require receivers with higher performance front-ends, using an external LNA to meet the requirement for additional sensitivity.
For most manufacturers, this added complexity makes an onboard front-end solution unattractive, leading to the selection of a separate and more costly front-end module.
The ZL10039 high sensitivity single-chip satellite tuner is the market's first to resolve this issue.
The ZL10039 device is a single-chip wideband direct conversion tuner for 1-45Msymbol/s Digital Video Broadcast-Satellite (DVB-S), Digital Satellite System (DSS), and 8-phase shift keying (8PSK) receiver systems.
Key features include the integrated LNA, an integrated RF loop-through and a "power and forget" VCO (voltage controlled oscillator), eliminating the need for time-consuming VCO calibration required by some competing products.
Zarlink's ZLE10541 reference design, combining the ZL10039 tuner with the ZL10313 demodulator, offers key features including high speed "blind scan" - an on-chip hard-wired controller that enables the chip to achieve ultrafast channel scanning capability with little intervention from an external processor.
The demodulator provides strong performance across the whole satellite 1-45Msymbol/s DVB-S symbol rate range.
Zarlink's two-chip RF subsystem design consumes less than 1W of power when in full operation, with an integrated sleep pin that reduces power consumption 1000-fold in stand-by mode.
The ZL10039 tuner is in full production.
The ZLE10541reference design is available to qualified customers.
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