A fabless semiconductor start-up from Hampshire claims to have a wideband radio tuner device which will allow it to break into the mobile TV market.
Mirics Semiconductor said its first configurable multi-band tuner is being evaluated by leading handset OEMs.
The two year old firm, which currently has seven staff, is competing in a silicon market dominated by established suppliers such as Philips, Atmel and Microtune.
CEO Simon Atkinson said the lack of a single standard was a major issue, but said he believes it offers an opportunity for chip suppliers to get a foothold in the market.
“The mobile broadcast market is extremely fragmented by multiple standards and band allocations. This fragmentation has been identified as the principal bottleneck to the wider adoption of mobile broadcast technologies; the small volumes available for any handset supporting a single standard do not justify its development,” said Atkinson.
He said that a truly multi-standard broadcast tuner was what most OEMs were looking for. “We are sampling working silicon which supports all current digital terrestrial broadcast standards, and analogue radio, across all terrestrial broadcast bands,” said Atkinson.
The device can be configured as a hetero or homodyne receiver and will match one of the 23 different modulation schemes used in broadcast systems around the world.
The chip provides coverage for all major broadcast bands ranging from 100KHz-1.9GHz (covering LW/MW/SW, L-Band and VHF Bands II, III, and UHF Bands IV and V).
The MSI001 tuner IC chip, which Atkinson said will cost $3.50 in volume, will receive all broadcast standards announced to date, including DVB-H, T-DMB, ISDB-T, DAB-IP, MediaFlo, DAB, DRM and AM/FM.
Atkinson said that major mobile phone firms and consumer DAB radio companies are already evaluating the chip.