Freescale Offers Low-Power CMOS Broadband Silicon Tuner for STBs

Freescale Semiconductor introduced a 3.3V single-chip CMOS broadband silicon tuner designed for the growing set-top box (STB) and analog/digital TV tuner markets. The MC44S803 tuner supports flexible power-consumption modes, enabling power to be adjusted from less than 700mW to 900mW to meet various system performance requirements. The broadband tuner is based on an innovative double-conversion architecture that simplifies STB and TV tuner designs and streamlines the manufacturing process.



Single-conversion tuners require multiple tracking filters, which must be adjusted while being manufactured. Manual alignment of tracking filters is a labor-intensive process that adds significant time and cost to the manufacturing process. In addition, tracking filter components typically have poor temperature, age and stability. The MC44S803 device's double-conversion architecture eliminates the need for discrete tracking filters and manually aligned coils, thereby reducing system cost and complexity, while improving performance and reliability.



The MC44S803 tuner is designed to meet DOCSI requirements for 64- and 256-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). The tuner's low-power 800mW operation meets DOCSIS v2.0 requirements. The device is also designed to support the NorDig Unified 1.0.1 specifications for coded orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (COFDM) for DVB-T.



The MC44S803 represents the third generation of Freescale's silicon broadband tuners. http://www.freescale.com