STMicroelectronics Enhances Cable TV Demodulator

22nd February 2007

ES Admin

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STMicroelectronics has announced a new-generation development of the industry-leading STV0297 Cable TV demodulator. The STV0279E High Performance QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) Demodulator adds new features to the widely-used STV0279D to deliver dramatic performance improvements that enable the demands on other elements in the reception chain to be relaxed, so reducing Bill of Materials (BOM) costs for manufacturers.

In addition, the STV0279E can achieve near-perfect reception on less-than-ideal or degraded networks. It inherits all the functionality of the STV0279D – which has become the de facto industry-standard demodulator with 30 million units shipped to date – and embeds new features such as four I2C addresses for PVR applications, and TSMF (Transport Stream Multiplexing Frame) capability to support the Japanese market.

With excellent QEF (Quasi Error Free) performance, improved echo cancellation capability and good phase noise immunity, the STV0279E enables manufacturers to produce lower cost STB solutions, with more robust performance, by using a lower cost tuner and other circuits. BOM cost is further reduced by the on-chip 12-bit ADC and the adjacent channels filter, which provides excellent immunity to out of band disturbance.

An extended complex equaliser now provides a total of approximately 100 Feed Forward and Feed Backward taps to allow correction of strong and long echoes. A dedicated phase noise cancellation block has also been introduced, In addition, a FEC (Forward Error Correction) block covering ITU-T annex A and C provides a serial or parallel bit stream. The STV0297E interfaces directly to any MPEG 2/4 decoder.

Its small footprint, low power consumption and outstanding performance, coupled with the ability to reduce the cost of other system components, make the STV0279E a highly cost-effective cable TV solution. Its application-oriented digital features, controlled via the I2C interface, enable the design of high quality systems; particular attention has been paid to application issues, with the demodulator providing outputs such as RF and IF AGC and noise-free I2C bus for tuner control, to simplify the design of high-quality application boards. It is supported by a full evaluation package and a detailed NIM (Network Interface Module) reference design.

The STV0279E is available in volume now, in a 10 x 10mm TQFP64 package, priced at $3.00 in quantities of 10,000 units.