Digital TV demodulator boasts worldwide broadcast standards
The family also expands Silicon Labs’ terrestrial demodulator portfolio with support for the Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T) standard prevalent in Brazil and other Latin America countries. The Si218x family is designed to meet the digital TV reception requirements of TV and set-top box (STB) makers, RF network interface module (NIM) suppliers and DVD/Blu-ray recorder manufacturers worldwide.
Silicon Labs’ single-chip Si218x demodulators build on continuous digital demodulation architectural enhancements to support emerging and established standards for terrestrial (DVB-T/T2, ISDB-T), satellite (DVB-S/S2/DSS/S2X) and cable (DVB-C/C2, ITU-T J83 Annex A/B/C) reception. The single-channel Si218x and dual-channel Si218x2 families enable TV and STB manufacturers to simplify complex video front-end designs and to address combinations of multiple broadcast standards with a single low-power and cost-effective demodulator solution.
For terrestrial broadcast applications, Silicon Labs has embedded its field experience in the terrestrial broadcast market into its third-generation Si218x DVB-T2 demodulators, which now support the popular ISDB-T standard. Developed to deliver high-quality digital video terrestrial reception, ISDB-T was pioneered in Japan and is deployed in Brazil and another 15 countries in South America, Central America, Africa and Asia.
“Silicon Labs’ ISDB-T demodulator and TV tuner chipset comply with all ABNT NBR 15604:2007Vc2008 specifications with significant margin to all items verified,” said Dr. Gunnar Bedicks, chief researcher at the Mackenzie Digital TV Laboratory. “The demodulator behaved extremely well in difficult reception test cases with outstanding overall performance, in particular against multipath with pre- and post-echoes and also against Doppler effects.”
The Digital TV Laboratory, a part of Mackenzie Presbyterian University located in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is the leading digital TV laboratory for transmission and reception system research. Since 1997, the laboratory has handled ISDB-T compliance and certification tests in cooperation with the Brazilian Broadcasters Association (ABERT), the Society for TV Engineers (SET), the Brazilian Communications Ministry and the Brazilian government regulatory agency, ANATEL.
In addition to complying with ISDB-T, the Si218x family supports the new DVB-S2X extension to the DVB-S2 standard for satellite reception. Demodulators supporting DVB-S2X enable developers to future-proof their TV and STB designs with advanced channel-recovery features and technology to support the forthcoming roll-out of 4K Ultra HD TV reception based on high-efficiency video coding (HEVC) capabilities. Already embedded in many TV SoC devices, HEVC decoding technology, combined with DVB-S2X reception, is becoming a “must-have” feature for the TV market.
The single-channel Si218x demodulators use the same 7 x 7 mm QFN-48 package as Silicon Labs’ previous demodulator family, providing pin-to-pin compatibility. The dual-channel Si218x2 demodulators, also pin compatible in an 8 x 8 mm QFN-68 package, feature an on-chip crossbar architecture that enables system designers to address a wide range of multi-receiver applications with efficient, cost-effective solutions. The Si218x and Si218x2 demodulators share the same API software, enabling customers to expand and adapt their application software to these new demodulators and upgrade their TV and STB products to ISDB-T and the latest digital video broadcast standards.
Silicon Labs has also updated its existing Si216x/6×2 DVB demodulator family to deliver new performance enhancements and support the DVB-S2X standard. The Si218x demodulator family is supported by a comprehensive set of evaluation boards. Reference design schematics, layout Gerber files and sample driver source code help expedite time to market while reducing development costs.
Silicon Labs; www.silabs.com/tv-demodulator
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