Silicon Labs, industry-leading performance
Single-chip hybrid TV tuner announced
Si2170 with Enhanced Reception Performance, Simplified Manufacturing Process


June 29, 2009 -- Silicon Laboratories (Country Manager Jong-Chan Lee, www.silabs.com , Silicon Laboratories NASDAQ: SLAB) announced the development of a complete hybrid TV tuner (product name: Si2170) that integrates an analog TV demodulator into a single CMOS IC. Developed based on Silicon Labs' digital low-IF architecture, the Si2170 is the industry's first silicon TV tuner to outperform existing discrete TV tuners, enabling TV manufacturers worldwide to improve the image quality and reception of both analog and digital broadcasts. Furthermore, due to its extremely high integration density, it eliminates the need for over 100 discrete components in Integrated Digital Television (iDTV), set-top box, and PC TV applications, while also providing benefits such as simplified system design, reduced manufacturing costs, and improved production yield and reliability.

Over the past few years, there have been consistent attempts in the industry to use silicon tuners instead of traditional discrete tuners. These efforts were primarily driven by the desire to meet standards, reduce manufacturing costs, alleviate design complexity, and shrink the form factor of consumer devices. However, it is true that until recently, silicon tuners fell short of achieving these industry goals. For instance, iDTVs still utilize traditional discrete tuners to achieve optimal performance in actual reception conditions. Furthermore, to implement hybrid analog and digital broadcast reception support performance using these solutions and to meet local broadcasting standards and system requirements, the system design becomes more complex and the solution costs increase.

To provide better performance than existing discrete TV tuner methods, the Si2170 silicon tuner is equipped with a highly linear RF front-end that integrates a proprietary integrated low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a high-Q tracking filter. This enables gain to be provided only at the desired channel frequencies. As a result, reception sensitivity is further improved, unintended strong channels and interference can be eliminated in some broadcast conditions, and more channels and weak signals can be received, as well as image clarity can be further enhanced.

Based on Silicon Labs' patented digital low-IF architecture, the Si2170 delivers superior performance and integration while addressing the challenges arising from hybrid analog/digital reception and multiple regional standards. This architecture enables the implementation of many functions, which typically rely on analog and discrete fixed components, using an economical and programmable digital signal processing (DSP). Consequently, TV manufacturers can more flexibly optimize system parameters and ensure compliance with all global cable and terrestrial standards, such as ATSC/QAM, DVB-T/C, ISDB-T/C, NTSC, PAL, and SECAM.

The integrated analog TV (ATV) demodulator in the product creates a common interface to system ICs, further simplifying customers' designs. In addition, the functions of the tuner and demodulation are used in harmony to optimize the reception of analog TV signals and eliminate visual beats or artifacts.

Designed with standard CMOS, the highly integrated Si2170 eliminates over 100 discrete components, including tracking filter functions, thereby removing the need for costly passive inductor tuning and alignment, and significantly reducing manufacturing costs. The Si2170 TV tuner not only enables design simplification and reduces BOM and manufacturing costs, but also offers the benefits of improved reliability and PCB production yield, as well as reduced field returns, through its high integration characteristics. With TVs becoming increasingly slimmer and smaller, the Si2170's PCB footprint is ideally suited for next-generation ultra-slim flat-panel TVs.

"Until now, there has been no silicon TV tuner in the industry that offers both cost savings and performance enhancements compared to existing discrete tuners," said Tyson Tuttle, Vice President at Silicon Labs. "The Si2170 TV tuner resolves a long-standing industry challenge based on Silicon Labs' proprietary mixed-signal design technology and IP. Designed using standard CMOS, it integrates tuner and demodulator functions to enable reception of both analog and digital broadcasts. With this, Silicon Labs has become the only company in the industry to provide a feasible roadmap for cost-effective hybrid single-chip TV receivers."