"We’re investing heavily in multi-standard development"

Frontier Silicon is a fables company offering a range of semic conductor solutions for digital radio and TV, and mobile digital TV. Its core products include complete DAB modules, DVB-T solutions, DMB solutions, and SoC devices and receiver chips. EDN Asia recently interviewed its CEO Anthony Sethill. Excerpts:

EDN Asia: Can you say something about the evolution of DAB, DVB and DMB from a design engineer’s perspective?

Sethill: DAB has evolved as audio and data technology. Low power was a key criterion in its evolution. DVB has evolved as fixedcommunication technology. So it has not been designed for low power. Both these standards will dominate Mobile TV. DMB is an extension of the Eureka 147 specification and used for digital radio broadcasts in much of Europe. DVB-H has been developed as an extension to the existing DVB-T standard which is widely used across Europe for digital TV broadcasts. Both DMB and DVB-H have been developed to provide robust and high bandwidth data channels required to enable reliable reception of digital video on handheld devices.

EDN Asia: What are the current challenges in offering mobile solutions and automotive solutions, and how is Frontier Silicon meeting these challenges?

Sethill: In mobile, the main challenges are reducing power consumption and ensuring chips are integrated as much as possible. The PC board area is of prime importance today, as also low power and reduced power dissipation. All these are enabled by chip integration. In automotive, designing for quality while ensuring optimum RF designs that is maximized in terms of sensitivity of the system is the main challenge. Our Company makes a range of products and development tools by recognizing environment for designs. We have already had a big impact on the audio broadcast market with over 70 percent of all DAB radios using our products. We are now investing heavily in our multi-standard development to ensure that we have a similar impact on the MDTV market.

EDN Asia: Your Company claims to be developing the world’s first multi-standard, multi-band MDTV chipset. Can you say something about this product?

Sethill: This product is called Kino 3, supporting both Korean and European DMB as well as the DVB-H standard for mobile TV reception. This device will combine a silicon tuner with broad tuning range and a baseband processor utilizing software defined radio techniques to address multiple MDTV reception standards.

Details of Kino 3 chip will be announced in 2006. Essentially, it has a multi-standard baseband demodulator/decoder and multi-band (Band II, III, IV, V and L-band) RF tuner IC, and incorporates integrated microcontroller and memory. The extremely low power chip set is expected to consume less than 50mW in DVB-H channel mode.

EDN Asia: How do you compare Kino 3 cost, size and power consumption with chips that support single standard?

Sethill: Kino 3 will compete in terms of cost, size and power consumption with devices that just support a single standard.

EDN Asia: Do you envisage any regulatory obstruction in deployment of MDTV?

Sethill: Commercial MDTV services based on DMB are expected to roll out in Korea during 2005 and in the UK and Germany in 2006. Commercial services based on DVBH will go live in USA during 2006. Parts of Europe will also adopt this standard during 2006 and 2007.

I think that regulatory, spectrum allocation and installed infrastructure issues could slow down MDTV deployment worldwide. As a Company we realized this early on and deployed resources to develop multi-standard ICs. Kino 3 is the result of such efforts, and will remove this barrier.