Livingston, UK — Elonics is releasing what it believes is the world's lowest power DVB-T/H terrestrial broadcast radio frequency (RF) tuner, designated E4000. It consumes 105 mW in continuous mode and 13 mW in time sliced mode. The tuner uses a combination of ultra low power silicon design techniques along with state-of-the-art 130-nm CMOS process technology to create a device that offers unrivalled low power consumption with world-class parametric performance. The CMOS tuner easily surpasses the MBRAI 2.0 requirements for mobile devices and NorDig 2.0 for DTV applications.
The E4000, which has an RF input frequency range from 64 MHz to 1700 MHz is unique in offering the ability to be re-configured under software control to support additional broadcast standards in the VHF, UHF and L bands. This is important for digital TV as there is a profusion of standards across the world. It means that manufacturers can use a single tuner across the globe, allowing them to cut development time and costs.
The tuner supports DVB-H, T-DMB, and CMMB (China) mobile digital TV standards; DVB-T, D-TMB, ISDB-T 13 Seg, and ATSC terrestrial digital TV standards; and legacy FM standards.
Designed to interface directly to a digital demodulator, the E4000 has a fully integrated low noise amplifier (LNA), programmable RF filter, and an RF mixer providing superior real world performance. The wide tuning range of the synthesiser and the programmable IF channel filter allows the user to cover a very wide frequency spectrum and different broadcast channel bandwidths. The E4000 tuner uses a zero IF architecture, which dramatically reduces the number of external components required and ensures that the device is suitable for high volume consumer electronics applications.
The launch of Elonics first standard product, the E4000 CMOS tuner represents the first use of a proprietary innovative technology called DigitalTune™. DigitalTune is a patent pending radio frequency architecture that uniquely allows each stage of the RF signal processing to be adjusted under digital control. This strategy has a number of benefits over traditional tuners that typically use analogue control voltages to manage the RF signal gain. As well as providing superior flexibility, it is used to adjust the performance of the tuner for optimum linearity or noise figure according to signal conditions.
Elonics CEO, David Srodzinski said, "The E4000 represents a very significant technological milestone in the industry by offering a substantial saving on power consumption versus competing solutions without sacrificing performance, making it ideal for the emerging worldwide digital TV market."
Elonics provides a complete range of E4000 support collateral including tuner reference designs, schematics and layouts. An easy to use evaluation board and GUI is available along with software scripts for complete system control. The device is available in production volumes in a Pb-free, RoHS compliant 5-x5-mm 32 lead QFN package.
For further information visit www.elonics.com.
