GCT Semiconductor Announces Single-Chip ISDB-T Mobile TV Receiver Featuring Diversity and Dual Channel Reception

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

GDM7302 enables better mobile TV reception and ability to tune in two channels simultaneously

SAN JOSE, CA — GCT Semiconductor, a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor solutions for wireless communications, today announced its mobile TV receiver, GDM7302, a complete single-chip solution for ISDB-T one-seg and three-seg broadcasting services. GDM7302 is the first ISDB-T receiver IC in the industry to feature a two receiver chain which can be configured for diversity or dual channel reception.

“GCT’s new ISDB-T solution integrates the radio frequency (RF) front end plus demodulator into one monolithic integrated circuit, enabling power savings, smaller size and bill-of-materials reduction,” commented Dr. Kyeongho “KH” Lee, President and CEO of GCT Semiconductor. “GDM7302’s advanced features enable ISDB-T terminals to be differentiated with enhanced viewing experiences.”

Diversity and Dual Channel Reception

With its two integrated tuners, GDM7302 can be configured for diversity reception, automatically receiving the optimal broadcasting signals from multiple antennas; thereby improving the quality and reliability of the wireless link. GCT’s proprietary algorithm for diversity reception offers optimal power consumption and better coverage through an adaptive control scheme.

Alternatively, GDM7302’s two receiver chain can be configured for dual channel reception, simultaneously receiving two channels of programming, allowing for various enhanced viewing experiences such as picture-in-picture and background recording and scanning. Additional benefits of GDM7302’s architecture are fast channel switching, seamless channel handover and on-the-fly switching between the diversity and dual channel configurations, without any hardware or software modifications.

“GCT’s ISDB-T solution enables mobile operators and handset vendors to offer superior features beyond simply watching TV on a mobile handset,” said Mr. Tomoya Hemmi, President and CEO of DOCOMO Capital, Inc. “Features like diversity and dual-channel reception are poised to become popular with viewers who desire a better watching experience. And thus, we expect that GCT’s new ISDB-T solution will boost the mobile TV market with their great success.”

GDM7302 uses GCT’s proven and mature CMOS RF architecture, achieving better than -110 dBm sensitivity without an external low noise amplifier and operates in both the Japanese and Brazilian ISDB-T frequency bands. GDM7302 lowers the bill-of-materials cost by requiring only a single crystal for diversity operation and enabling dual channel operation with single antenna reception.

GDM7302 is available in a 6 mm x 6 mm wafer level chip scale package (WLCSP), and supports flexible interfaces such as serial TS, SPI and USB. Samples are currently available and mass production is planned for 3Q 2008.