Altera Corporation and Commsonic have announced a partnership to deliver what they describe as the industry’s first multi-channel, single-chip FPGA solution. The companies are integrating the forward error correction (FEC) and modulation chain for digital broadcast over cable. The solution is compatible with the ITU-T J.83 Annex A, B & C standards adopted in Japan and North America, and the European Digital Video Broadcast - Cable (DVB-C) standard.
The solution is intended to enable broadcast OEMs to deliver cost-effective equipment designed for use in intelligent video networks to facilitate ‘on-the-fly’ reconfiguration of bandwidth-on-demand.
The two companies plan to develop professional modulators/demodulators for the DVB satellite version 2 (DVB-S2) and DVB satellite (DVB-S) standards as well as other cable, terrestrial and satellite applications before the end of the year.
Commsonic has already developed single-channel modulators for DVB-C and the COFDM-based DVB terrestrial (DVB-T) standards that are optimised for Stratix II and Cyclone II FPGAs. Altera demonstrated the Commsonic solutions during this year’s International Broadcast Convention (IBC2005) in Amsterdam.