MaxLinear demonstrates satellite UHD reference design with ST and Quantenna at IBC

Friday, September 11th, 2015
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MaxLinear Demonstrates Multi-Channel Satellite UHD Reference Design with STMicroelectronics and Quantenna at IBC 2015

  • Integration of MaxLinear’s FSC™ satellite front end with ST’s latest generation UHD decoder and Quantenna’s 4×4 802.11ac WiFi solution provides OEMs with a scalable mid-range or high-end PVR design for pay TV operators

CARLSBAD, Calif. — MaxLinear Inc. (NYSE: MXL), a leading provider of integrated radio frequency (RF) and mixed-signal integrated circuits for broadband communications applications, announced it will demonstrate a scalable multi-channel satellite UHD set-top box and media server reference design with STMicroelectronics and Quantenna at the IBC 2015 exhibition in Amsterdam, Sept. 11-15, 2015.

The joint reference design combines MaxLinear’s MxL5xx family of Full-Spectrum Capture™ (FSC™) satellite receivers with ST’s STiH418 4Kp60 Ultra High Definition (UHD) decoder and Quantenna’s QSR1000 4×4 802.11ac “Wave 2” WiFi chipset solution.

The reference design is highly scalable to address a wide range of functionality and services demanded by leading satellite service providers aiming to deploy next-generation UHD TV and multi-screen, multi-room services. For mid-range UHD personal video recorder (PVR) applications, the platform can be configured with four satellite TV tuners, UHD TV and picture-in-picture (PiP) display, plus transcoding and WiFi streaming of two HD channels to WiFi-enabled client devices.

OEMs can also use the reference design as a high-end satellite home media server with advanced services including eight satellite TV tuners, UHD TV and PiP display, transcoding and WiFi streaming of four HD channels to WiFi-enabled client devices, up to eight simultaneous HDD recordings, and fast channel change on multiple TVs.

The STiH418 is based on quad-core ARM processors delivering 12K DMIPS, superior 2D/3D graphics performance with a Mali™ GPU, integrated hardware Faroudja® multimedia subsystem with HEVC video decoder, high-performance video encoder and high-quality video pre- and post-processing.

The MaxLinear FSC satellite receiver is available as a four-channel network interface module (NIM) based on the MxL541C device, or an eight-channel NIM based on the MxL582C device. Both MaxLinear devices are industry leading, single chip multi-channel receiver solutions with all major functions integrated, including the low-noise amplifiers (LNAs).

The four-channel and eight-channel NIMs plug into the STiH418 motherboard and are available to customers upon request.

Quantenna’s QSR1000 is the industry first 802.11ac “Wave 2” WiFi chipset solution. The QSR1000 builds on Quantenna’s True 4×4™ MIMO foundation which enables throughputs of up to 1.7Gbps. With additional support of universal transmit beamforming, four spatial streams and multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), the QSR1000 is capable of delivering long range performance even in challenging home or office environments. The chipset is designed for gateways, video bridges and set-top box platforms and enables them to transmit concurrent multiple UHD streams to multiple televisions, with whole-home coverage, over a single wireless network.

MaxLinear and ST will be demonstrating the joint reference design at IBC 2015 in Amsterdam, Sept. 11-14. To setup a meeting or private demonstration, please contact ibc2015@MaxLinear.com.