Reference Alleviates PVR-Tuner Design Difficulties

One of the toughest parts of personal-video-recorder (PVR) design involves the tuner. Designers can now forget that part of the design thanks to the ZLE10565 dual-channel digital cable RF tuner reference design. It integrates a front-end diplexer and dual-input splitter/amplifier with two double-conversion up/down tuners and full-stage IF processing. The design uses seven of the company's RF chips, including the low-noise SL2150D power-splitter chip with built-in automatic gain control, the SL2101 broadband upconverter, the ZL10100 downconverter, and the SL2009 IF amplifier. Operating range is 50 to 860 MHz with a differential gain of 81.5 dB, single-ended gain of 76 dB, and a 44-MHz IF output that's compatible with most quadrature-amplitude-modulation demodulators.