MaxLinear Tuners Power New DVB-T2 Set-Top Boxes in Europe

Thursday, July 26th, 2012
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More than 1.4 million MaxLinear DVB-T2 tuners shipped in first half of 2012

CARLSBAD, Calif. — MaxLinear Inc., (NYSE: MXL), a leading provider of integrated radio frequency (RF) and mixed-signal integrated circuits for broadband communications applications, today announced that it has shipped more than 1.4 million DVB-T2 digital terrestrial television (DTT) tuners into European markets in the first half of 2012 to meet rising demand for DVB-T2 terrestrial TV services.

The widespread adoption of DVB-T2 technology across Western and Eastern Europe for digital DTT broadcast services is giving rise to a new generation of high-definition television (HDTV) set-top boxes. The DVB-T2 standard imposes much stricter radio frequency (RF) performance requirements on the set-top box tuner, compared to previous DTT standards.

MaxLinear has been the market leader in DTT tuners for years, with field-proven products like the MxL603, MxL601, MxL136, MxL101SF, MxL135RF and MxL5007T. In total, MaxLinear has shipped more than 100 million broadband DTT tuners to worldwide markets since 2009.

MaxLinear’s trademark low power consumption, excellent performance and low cost derived from its core CMOS tuner technology have enabled it to become the preferred tuner vendor for DVB-T2 HD set-top box solutions.

As noted in a July 23 MaxLinear press release, next-generation set-top boxes based on MaxLinear’s new MxL603 silicon tuner are already under development and will enable manufacturers to achieve a level of RF performance that was previously unobtainable. In many typical emerging markets for DVB-T2 set-top boxes, the field conditions for terrestrial broadcasting require that the tuner is capable of reliably receiving over-the-air TV signals that are extremely weak and must have excellent immunity to strong interference sources such as other adjacent analog & digital TV signals, FM radio, WiFi and LTE/4G cellular transmissions.

Mx603 Technical Highlights

Based on low-power 65-nm digital CMOS process technology, the MxL603 silicon tuner supports all global digital cable and terrestrial television reception standards, including: DVB-T/T2, ISDB-T, ATSC, ATSC M/H, DTMB, ITU J.83 Annex A/B/C, DVB-C2, DOCSIS and EuroDOCSIS. The device is software-configurable for any of these standards, allowing manufacturers to re-use designs in multiple markets.

The MxL603 tuner features an integrated LNA, on-chip loop-through, and exceptional sensitivity performance that enables robust reception of weak signals, even in the presence of multiple strong interferers such as LTE/4G, WiFi or adjacent analog and digital channels.

The MxL603 delivers an unprecedented noise figure of 3.8 dB and includes MaxLinear’s leading-edge blocker immunity technology for advanced filtering of strong signals from adjacent channels. The combination of superior sensitivity and linearity performance provides assurance to set-top box manufacturers that current products will meet future tuner specifications as they evolve.

MxL603 is available in a tiny 4 mm x 4 mm 24-pin QFN package and consumes approximately 400 mW in digital terrestrial mode. The low power consumption and small footprint enables low-cost, two-layer PCB implementations and ultra-small form factor tuner modules without the need for an expensive heat sink or fan.