Television tuners come in metal cans, right? They still do, but that's changing. TV and set-top-box manufacturers can trade in older, bulkier, and expensive tuner cans for a single 7- by 7-mm chip (see the figure). Xceive's XC2028 and XC3028 RF-to-baseband receivers meet the needs of virtually all TV standards worldwide.
LCD and plasma TV sets are thinner than ever, and set-top boxes must be compatible with a growing number of digital TV formats and standards. Xceive's receivers should lower costs while saving space and providing equal or better features and performance in today's highly developed canned tuners. These ICs may find their way into handhelds like cell phones, too.
The XC2028 is an all-analog tuner compatible with all analog formats, including NTSC, PAL, and SECAM. It has a standard composite color video output (CVBS, or color-video-blanking-sync). The XC3028 includes all the analog capability of the XC2028 and adds all common digital TV standards, including DVB-C, DVB-T, ISDB-T, ATSC, and DOCSIS.
Both devices have an input frequency range of 42 to 862 MHz, which covers all TV and cable bands. The input impedance is the standard 75 W. The noise figure is 6 dB. The architecture is standard single-conversion superheterodyne with all internal filters. The mixer output feeds a fast analog-to-digital converter that delivers the digitized IF to an on-chip DSP unit for filtering, demodulation, and baseband signal conditioning.The overall automatic gain control (AGC) range is 80 dB, and the image rejection is 60 dB. The low-noise amplifier third-order intermodulation intercept point is 8 dBm. The only external component required is a 32-MHz crystal.
A standard I2C serial interface is provided for control and channel-selection purposes. The XC3028 also has a second IF output plus CVBS and two digital TV format outputs. Xceive's QuickTune technology is patent-pending.
Both devices come in a 48-pin MLF package. The supply voltage is 1.8 or 3.3 V. Power consumption is about 1 W. Samples are available now for $9.25 for the XC2028 and $14.50 for the XC3028. Full production quantities of both devices will be on hand in the fourth quarter.
Xceive Corp.www.xceive.com