OTTAWA, CANADA—Zarlink Semiconductor today introduced the ZL10039 device, the industry’s first single-chip satellite tuner for FTA (free-to-air) satellite DTV receivers. Combined with Zarlink’s ZL10313 satellite demodulator, the ZL10039 direct conversion tuner offers the most integrated and cost-effective front-end solution for the FTA satellite market.

The new tuner includes a high-performance LNA (low-noise amplifier), eliminating the need for additional RF circuitry. Together with the ZL10313 demodulator and supported by the ZLE10541 front-end reference design, satellite STB (set-top box) manufacturers can now achieve the performance required by FTA receivers directly on the motherboard, a cost-effective design approach that has been used in the PayTV market for several years. This design can save over five percent of the total receiver hardware BOM (bill-of-materials) costs.

With the ZL10039 satellite tuner, Zarlink strengthens its leadership position in front-end solutions for digital receivers. Zarlink’s chips are designed into FTA and subscriber-based digital satellite systems worldwide. Satellite was the first digital TV delivery mechanism to achieve worldwide adoption, and still leads in volume, with over 30 million shipments predicted for 2006. Deployments in China and India are continuing to drive demand.

“The advances we have achieved with the ZL10039 tuner and reference design result from our experience serving the high-volume market for free-to-air receivers,” says Bob Ferreira, DTV front-end product line director, Zarlink Semiconductor. “Our tuner with integrated LNA is the first to enable large-scale implementation of FTA front-end designs directly onto the motherboard, saving costs while maintaining performance levels.”

Unlike the PayTV market, where the quality of installation and signal strength is consistently good, the FTA market offers more difficult conditions. The quality of the signal components (dish, cable, connectors) and the installation can be poor, resulting in unacceptable levels of signal attenuation. To address this, and to maximize the number of channels that can be captured, FTA manufacturers typically require receivers with higher performance front-ends, using an external LNA to meet the requirement for additional sensitivity.

For most manufacturers, this added complexity makes an on-board front-end solution unattractive, leading to the selection of a separate and more costly front-end module. The ZL10039 high sensitivity single-chip satellite tuner is the market’s first to resolve this issue.

The ZL10039 device is a single-chip wideband direct conversion tuner for 1 – 45 MSps (megasymbols per second) DVB-S (Digital Video Broadcast-Satellite), DSS (Digital Satellite System), and 8PSK (8-phase shift keying) receiver systems.

Key features include the integrated LNA, an integrated RF loop-through and a “power and forget” VCO (voltage controlled oscillator), eliminating the need for time-consuming VCO calibration required by some competing products.

Zarlink’s ZLE10541 reference design, combining the ZL10039 tuner with the ZL10313 demodulator, offers key features including high speed “blind scan,” which is an on-chip hard-wired controller that enables the chip to achieve ultra-fast channel scanning capability with little intervention from an external processor. The demodulator provides strong performance across the whole satellite 1 – 45 MSps DVB-S symbol rate range.

Zarlink’s two-chip RF subsystem design consumes less than 1 W (watt) of power when in full operation, with an integrated sleep pin that reduces power consumption 1,000-fold in stand-by mode.

The price for the product kit, which includes the ZL10039 and the ZL10313 is $2.88 in quantities of 10,000. The ZL10039 tuner is in full production. The ZLE10541reference design is available to qualified customers. Click here for the data sheet.

In PayTV, satellite signal strength and the quality of the customer premises equipment (CPE) is well defined, whereas in the Free-to-Air satellite-TV environment, this is not the case and there is a great variation in the quality of the components and installation. As a result, the satellite signal is often significantly attenuated by the time it reaches the receiver.

For manufacturers of set top boxes (STBs) in this space, a key priority, then, is to find a receiver with the best sensitivity. Traditionally, these designers use a standard satellite tuner and add a low-noise amplifier (LNA) with support circuitry. The problem with this approach is that it requires RF expertise. So, many STB manufacturers instead use an off-the-shelf RF module, which takes up more real estate and costs more money.

In regular PayTV satellite, designers can drop the receiver right on the motherboard. When using an RF module instead, this is not possible. As a result, there are now two distinct satellite receiver markets: using a device on the motherboard for PayTV, and modules for Free to Air. The Free-to-Air market is very competitive, particularly in China, and it is growing in India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other markets.

In response, the team at Zarlink has integrated an external LNA into the receiver chip in the ZL10039, making it possible for STB designers to put a Free-to-Air tuner with the required sensitivity right on the motherboard. This saves money, manufacturing/engineering/test time, and frees up printed circuit board space.

For this part, sensitivity is hands down the most important specification, and the ZL10039 is specified with sensitivity of better than -84.5 dBm at 27.5 MSymbols/s. "When paired with our ZL10313 demodulator, the design is simple to use and requires no alignment or software tuning algorithms," reports Richard Crossley, product line marketing manager with the Consumer Communications group at Zarlink.

Sensitivity is important in the Free-to-Air market because equipment is manufactured at the lowest costs possible, so quality is low and signal strength is compromised. High sensitivity at the receiver end can compensate for that.

"In this market, it is also crucial to be able to manufacture in a repeatable way, so we supply a complete reference design to help them design the parts into the motherboard and achieve a repeatable design," adds Crossley. "In addition, we made sure that the tuner requires no manual alignment or calibration during production, like a typical TV tuner requires."

Another interesting specification for this product is its power consumption. During the design phase, the team at Zarlink managed to halve the power from the previous generation zero-IF tuner, down to 500 mW. Although, on the surface, low power is not a huge factor in the Asia/Pacific market, low power does improve reliability, and that is an attractive feature.

The most challenging aspects of this product for the design team were addressing low-cost concerns ("Our customers expect a 20% reduction in component cost each year," says Crossley.) and integrating the LNA with comparable performance to an off-chip approach.

How did they do it? Crossley notes, "We always task our engineers to look at every way they can to reduce costs. This often means choosing the right process, packaging, and minimizing die size." In terms of integrating the LNA and optimizing sensitivity, Zarlink credits extensive RF design expertise and sophisticated analog/RF modeling tools.

"Five or 10 years ago, would expect to do two or three spins to get an RF chip right, now we are using tools that allow you to get it pretty much right the first time," Crossley notes.

With the kind of performance this chip achieves, and the way it simplifies Free-to-Air receiver design, it looks like this will be a hot product for Asia/Pacific STBs.