Micronas Delivers World’s Smallest Digital TV Demodulator (0702)

ATSC A/53 compliant demodulator meets imminent FCC tuner mandate for US market without compromising performance for size or cost.

Freiburg, Germany, January 4, 2007 – Micronas (SWX Swiss Exchange: MASN), a leading supplier of innovative application-specific IC system solutions for consumer electronics, today announced availability of the DRX3931J, an 8VSB and QAM 64/256 demodulator with integrated IF amplifier. The DRX3931J demodulates standard- and high-definition television signals according to ATSC-A/53, the North American digital television broadcast standard and QAM 64/256 signals as specified by ITU-T J.83 Annex B.

Offered in a tiny 7x7 mm 48 pin QFN package, it is the smallest solution on the market, and represents an 80 percent reduction in size compared to other solutions. In addition to being highly cost competitive, the dramatic reduction in size also makes it uniquely suited for space-constrained designs like multi-tuner applications, PC-based systems and tuner Network Interface Modules (NIMs).

“The last phase of the FCC tuner mandate is certainly the most critical phase for cost and size sensitive applications like small size TVs, terrestrial set top boxes, DVD recorders, PCTV applications and other devices with terrestrial reception capabilities,” said Stefan Szasz, Marketing Manager ATSC at Micronas Semiconductors Inc., San Diego, California. “Ironically, these are also applications that are most likely to be used for digital terrestrial TV reception and thus require robust and reliable reception performance. The DRX3931J is optimized to support all types of applications in the most competitive manner without compromising any of the critical factors like performance, size and cost, which are vital for the success of our customers in the market place” Szasz added.

The ATSC-compatible DRX3931J is based on Micronas’s primeD^® demodulator technology, the field-proven “ghost friendly” 8VSB demodulator technology from Micronas. Solutions based on primeD improve performance in the multipath-rich environments typical in cities and ensure reliable reception under severe signal conditions.

Rich Citta, Chief Scientist at Micronas Semiconductors and one of the key architects of the ATSC standard, says “Micronas’s primeD technology does not simply discard undesired signal echoes, but instead combines them with the desired signal. This results in superior performance under realistic field conditions.” He adds that the DRX3931J enables highly optimized adjacent-channel performance by integrating a broadband input power detector.

The integrated IF amplifier allows customers to use lower cost tuner modules, further reducing the system cost. A pin-compatible version without the integrated IF amplifier is available for use with highly integrated silicon tuners.

The DRX3931J solution includes a range of software modules to control the device. All modules share a common API. This approach ensures accelerated design times for a quick time-to-market which is essential in today’s competitive environment.

For 100K annual quantities, the pricing will be around 4 US Dollars. Samples are available today, with mass production planned for the second quarter of 2007.