Digital-Media Broadcast Chipsets Slash Time-To-Market.

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 18, 1996--Anticipating explosive growth in the digital-media broadcasting (DMB) market over the next several years, Philips Semiconductors introduced an innovative and versatile group of integrated circuits that will dramatically reduce time-to-market, a key ingredient for success in this rapidly emerging arena.

According to Jon Stilwell, product marketing manager for Philips' DMB chipsets, manufacturers must be able to work very closely with their semiconductor suppliers in order to minimize development time. The integrated-circuit suppliers must be fluent in DMB-receiver design from the front-end tuners that pick up satellite, cable or terrestrial signals to the digital video encoders that recreate baseband video and audio. With the introduction of the new DMB chipsets, Philips is well positioned as a technological leader in the emerging market.

Satellite Receiver ICs

Designed for satellite broadcast reception within the 700MHz to 2150MHz band, the low-cost TDA8010AM mixer/oscillator chip outperforms its similar-functioning, yet highly expensive gallium-arsenide counterpart by achieving the exceptionally low level of phase noise required to minimize the error rate in DMB.

The device's capacity to operate within the phase-locked loop of standard TV tuners, coupled with its ability to cover the entire satellite band without the need for band switching, ensures a simple and cost-effective tuner design.

Philips' TDA8042 QPSK demodulator and TDA8043 single-chip Satellite channel decoder provide a complete solution to decoding BPSK- or QPSK-modulated UHF transmissions received by the TDA8010AM. This high-performance two-chip demodulator/decoder handles symbol rates as high as 32M symbols per second (sps).

The DTA8042 provides the IF mixers and the AGC circuits required to generate separate in-phase and quadrature baseband signals. The TDA8043 then digitizes the quadrature signals and performs all of the digital decoding required to regenerate MPEG-2 transport-package data, including forward error correction.

The TDA8043 -- unique in the market as the only QPSK decoder that supports true variable symbol rates without any external loops -- can be used in singlecast, multicast and simulcast applications. The reduction in component count that results from its unprecedented level of functionality is further enhanced by the fact that SAW filtering is not required to accommodate different symbol frequencies. In addition, all AGC, clock-recovery and carrier-recovery functions are performed entirely on-chip.

CATV Receiver ICs

Philips Semiconductors' new TDA8046H Multi-Mode QAM demodulator is a single-chip device that decodes digitally-transmitted cable broadcasts. It handles all modulation modes up to 256 QAM at symbol rates as high as 7Msps, thus making it suitable for use in domestic as well as European digital CATV systems.

To avoid the need for complex analog filtering, the TDA8046H features on-chip square-root, raised-cosine, half-Nyquist filters for removing unwanted harmonics from the baseband signal without introducing phase errors -- an extremely important QAM-demodulator function for maintaining symbol-decoding accuracy.

Another important feature of the TDA8046H is its adaptive equalizer, a circuit that cancels signal echoes without the need for embedding training sequences in the transmission. The result is that the device can lock onto 256 QAM constellations in transmissions with signal-to-noise ratios as low as 27dB. The TDA8046H can be used with standard, commercially-available CATV tuners.

Philips Semiconductors offers a wide range of high-speed, low-power A/D converters suitable for digitizing a QAM signal before it is decoded by the TDA8046H. These devices include the 8-bit, 75-Msps TDA8790 and the 9-bit, 30-Msps TDA8761AM, both of which achieve the superior linearity and signal-to-noise ratios necessitated by low-error-rate demodulation.

Any errors that may happen to remain in the demodulated data are corrected by Philips Semiconductors' recently-introduced SAA7207H Reed-Solomon Decoder and Forward-Error Corrector. This integrated circuit handles DVB-compliant Reed-Solomon code and features automatic byte, block and frame synchronization, as well as convolutional de-interleaving and energy-dispersal randomizing.

Its Reed-Solomon decoding is implemented in three fully-pipelined hardware units, each performing one of the algorithms required in the decoding process. The output of the SAA7207H is an error-corrected MPEG-2 data stream.

User-Evaluation Demonstration Board

Philips Semiconductor has made available the OM5702 cable- channel decoding demonstration board to permit users to evaluate the performance of the TDA8046H/SAA7207H combination. Equipped with an on-board CATV front-end tuner, the board accepts an analog QAM RF input and decodes that signal into digital data for direct input to an MPEG-2 decoder.

Plug-in daughter boards allow users to analyze the performance of the TDA8046H by employing a constellation analyzer and a bit-error-rate (BER) analyzer. Data and status information for the SAA7207H can then be obtained. The new demonstration board includes boundary-scan facilities for diagnostics and testing and is also supplied with Windows-based I2C-bus control software.

Philips Semiconductors, Inc., a subsidiary of Philips Electronics North America Corporation and an affiliate of Philips Electronics NV, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the eleventh largest semiconductor supplier in the world. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position that company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia, and wireless communications market. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by regional customer applications labs.

Additional information on Philips Semiconductors can be obtained by accessing the home page at http://www.semiconductors.philips.com -0-

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Visit us at Comdex/Fall 96, booth number L2625, South Hall, Las Vegas Convention Center.

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