MaxLinear Debuts Tuner IC Aimed at Digital TV Cutover Products

Low-Power MxL5007T Provides Green Solution for ATSC Converter and Set Top Boxes; Device Beats Stringent ATSC A/74 Standards for Rejecting Undesired Signals

CARLSBAD, CA — MaxLinear, Inc., a fabless communications IC company at the forefront of developing CMOS-based broadband radio frequency (RF) ICs for consumer markets, today announced the MxL5007T, a TV tuner IC developed for low-cost converter, set top box (STB) and other TV systems currently being designed for the FCC-mandated 2009 digital television cutover.

The FCC estimates that approximately 20 million U.S. households will require ATSC-to-Analog TV converters by the 2009 cutover date. With its extremely low external BOM cost and digital CMOS implementation, the MxL5007T is a superior choice for ATSC converter designs, allowing manufacturers significant cost reductions in an extremely price-sensitive market.

Measuring only 5mm x 5mm in a 32-pin QFN package, the MxL5007T features very high levels of integration (including LNAs, baluns, tracking and loop filters, and integrated SAW filter functionality) resulting in a low bill of materials (BOM) and providing manufacturers an aggressive cost down path in this market.

MxL5007T is the “greenest” tuner IC on the market, consuming only 300mW of power. In comparison to other 1Watt-plus tuners, employing the MxL5007T in the 30+ million units covered by the coupon program, potentially saves more than 35 megawatts of power and $40 million in energy savings per year.

MxL5007T is based on the company’s proprietary digital CMOS implementation, which not only exceeds the performance of SiGe BiCMOS process-based tuners, but also delivers the low cost, low power consumption and the heat dissipation benefits of CMOS technology. The device incorporates key circuit design and radio architecture technology breakthroughs that enable “can” tuner equivalent performance in ATSC-to-analog converter boxes and DVB-T only STBs and PC TV applications. Like other products in the MxL5007 family, this device exceeds by a healthy margin the ATSC A/74 Receiver Performance Guidelines, especially the stringent distortion specification for rejection of unwanted signals proximate to the desired signal. This is a critical performance metric for converter boxes covered under the NTIA coupon program which has proven extremely difficult for other silicon tuners to meet.

“Customers like the features and performance of our MxL5007 global standards silicon tuner for their terrestrial and cable TV applications, but want a version optimized solely for these highly price-sensitive markets,” said Kishore Seendripu, MaxLinear’s CEO. “The MxL5007T is unmatched in performance while offering the lowest solution cost, the lowest power and the easiest implementation of any other silicon tuner.”

The MxL5007T can receive an input signal spanning a continuous frequency band from 44MHz to 860MHz from a 75-ohm antenna or cable. The MxL5007T has an integrated low noise amplifier (LNA), on chip tracking & PLL loop filters, automatic gain control, LO generation, and channel selectivity functions for simplified and low cost board-level design. Additionally, the MxL5007T has a flexible output intermediate frequency (IF) ranging from 4 to 44 MHz to support many demodulators. An integrated on-chip loop through function vastly simplifies STB designs that require an additional RF out, and multi-tuner applications such as PVRs, televisions supporting picture-in-picture, and other similar functionality.

The device is part of MaxLinear’s MxL5007 global standards tuner IC family.

Availability

MaxLinear will demonstrate the MxL5007T by appointment during CES2008 (Las Vegas, Jan. 7-10), with engineering samples and evaluation kits available in February 2008, and production quantities expected in Q2 2008.