Display audio solution meets complex infotainment needs

The company also enters the car radio tuner front-end market with tuneX, combining hardware and software to provide a highly cost-effective software-defined radio (SDR) solution.

The CSRatlas7 adds to the CSR Auto SoC product family and is designed to meet the needs of the complex infotainment systems demanded by today’s connected consumer. The application processor has a dual-core CPU and GPU architecture with integrated peripherals, including Bluetooth, Software Defined Radio (SDR), GNSS baseband, an audio DSP and high quality audio-codecs components.

Advanced infotainment features enabled by display audio solution will provide consumers access to a large new ecosystem of in-vehicle infotainment and navigation applications via the head unit and provide a highly responsive and seamless in-car experience. For example, the widely adopted CSR aptX audio codec is integrated and enables high quality wireless audio streaming. To ensure the most reliable navigation, CSR SiRFDrive technology offers improved positioning accuracy to aid smartphone navigation apps.

The turnkey software and hardware solution is available with a number of differentiating software stacks, including CarPlay and Mirrorlink for streaming multimedia between the external devices and the in-vehicle infotainment system; cVc for high fidelity audio over hands-free applications; and SDR with tuneX front ends that support all worldwide radio standards. The chipset comes with a pre-integrated and qualified software package to greatly reduce the complexity for infotainment system providers.

The pin-compatible front-end tuner chip offers outstanding RF performance across all radio standards including AM/FM, DAB, T-DMB, DRM and HD Radio, eliminating the need for OEMs to implement dedicated hardware for each region.

The current market for car radios forces localisation, with multiple digital standards deployed on a regional basis. In the tuneX solution regionalisation and differentiation are performed in the software element. Demodulation is migrated from the hardware element to software and eliminates the need for a dedicated car radio processor, while processing is carried out on the SoC’s RAM and Flash memory systems. This further simplifies the development, qualification and purchasing cycle and allows OEMs to differentiate their radio products and fine-tune performance parameters at the front end. This can also result in a less expensive SDR car radio.

Software offers OEMs the flexibility to tweak performance, enable field upgrades for new services or patches and add future additional features. Consumers will own a future-proof car radio that is software upgradable and highly configurable.

Another advantage is support for concurrent reception and scalability benefits when moving from single tuner to multi-tuner concepts. tuneX leverages system memory when a user changes to an alternative radio channel. As soon as two or more standards are received concurrently in a dual or multi tuner design, the signals are available in the software audio buffers and users can blend between channels immediately with no noticeable audio delay.

CSR offers tuneX front-ends or tuneX software demodulators as standalone products or as part of a fully integrated radio package on the newly released CSRatlas7platform. CSR can also offer tuneX as a solution working on a third-party platform.

Anthony Murray, Senior Vice President, Business Group, CSR said: “Car owners expect to be able to safely control every aspect of their driving experience, from music and communications to tire pressure monitoring and in-vehicle lighting, at the touch of a button. The challenge has been to meet this demand for a multitude of connected features with a single automotive-ready solution. CSR has been working closely with automakers to establish new levels of configurability and flexibility with the CSRatlas7 and tuneX solutions. We offer several integrated platforms designed to work seamlessly and securely with the rest of the automobile that also reduce BOM costs and speed their time-to-market.”

"We are extremely pleased to have CSR join the HD Radio family of partners," commented Jeff Jury, COO, iBiquity Digital. "As HD Radio technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous, integrated solutions, such as CSR's Atlas7 platform, will ensure consumers get the best possible infotainment experience in their new cars."

“The tuneX products enable the use of a single worldwide hardware platform that performs ‘regionalisation’ and differentiation in the software, enabling new levels of configurability, flexibility and portability for the OEM and a ‘future proof’ radio for consumers. The combination of hardware and a SDR software library makes tuneX perfectly suited for car radio, display audio, infotainment, receiver box and smart antenna applications,” added Murray, Senior Vice President, Business Group, CSR.