Frontier Silicon demonstrates DVB-H receiver designed for multi-standard mobile TV at IBC

The Paradiso chip has been developed to address the myriad of mobile TV handset receiver standards resulting from differing regional deployment and spectrum regulation plans. It is designed to allow mobile handset and portable device manufacturers to achieve economies of scale by delivering a single mobile TV platform that addresses multiple market segments and standards. Furthermore, Frontier is working with a number of leading protocol stack developers to enable Paradiso to be optimised for specific standards.

Commenting on the significance of a single chip for multiple standards, Matthew Hatch, VP marketing & business development of Frontier said, “We started the development of Paradiso from a strong position in T-DMB handsets where we have already shipped over 1 million units. One of the benefits is that our multi-standard solution has negligible cost overhead compared to competing single standard receiver solutions – providing a very compelling complete mobile TV solution for handset manufacturers.”

The level of flexibility offered by the new multi-standard IC is not available in competing solutions – with features such as integrated 2Mbit MPE-FEC memory and Reed Solomon decoding for advanced Doppler and multi-path channel algorithms; enhanced packet and data group modes for T-DMB/DAB-IP; multiple PID, section and IP stream filters; and an extensive set of peripherals including SPI, SDIO and USB interfaces. The interface to the host application processor offers IP datagram, MPEG-2 Transport System (TS), Fast Information Channel (FIC) or Main Service Channel (MSC) output streams with control and boot mechanisms. The programmable nature of Paradiso allows this interface to be optimised to facilitate host processors with non-standard communication protocols.

Paradiso’s comprehensive firmware ensures optimised hardware and software interfacing to the host application processor, minimising the MIPS and real-time requirements of the host and thus saving power. It is designed in a compact 8 x 8 x 1 mm VFBGA package for slim-phones and low profile portable devices, and offers low power operation using advanced power management and power saving algorithms – delivering 50mW typical power consumption in T-DMB and typically 16mW in DVB-H mode. The new baseband receiver IC has been designed with an open RF interface to provide the capability of operating with a wide range of RF tuners. Paradiso’s DSP-based software architecture allows tracking of evolving requirements and is crafted not to compromise on power consumption.