Siano Mobile Silicon Unveils World's Lowest Power Consumption Mobile Digital TV Receiver
Multi-band, Multi-standard Receiver Chipset Offers a Low Cost, Easy to Design Solution for Fast Integration of Digital TV into Mobile Devices
Netanya, Israel, September 19, 2005 - Siano Mobile Silicon announced today the successful sampling of an ultra-low-power, quad-band, multi-standard receiver for mobile digital TV applications. Siano's SMS1000 is a complete solution for integrating digital TV function into hand-held and portable devices such as mobile phones, smartphones and PDAs, lap-top and notebook PCs, portable media players, portable DVD players, portable game consoles, etc. It consists of a quad-band Zero-IF CMOS RF tuner (SMS1001) and a multi-standard demodulator (SMS1002) operating in concert to ensure full compatibility and smooth integration. When processing DVB-H, the chipset consumes less than 25mW, the industry's lowest power consumption figure for the combination of a tuner and a demodulator.
The SMS1000 supports DVB-H, DVB-T, DAB, Enhanced Packet Mode DAB and T-DMB mobile digital TV standards. A one-stop-shop for mobile digital TV device makers, the SMS1000 allows them to design and manufacture multiple products for multiple markets using a single receiver chipset.
"Developing the architecture of the SMS1000, we leveraged our experience with the mobile phone industry, and took the standpoint of a phone or PDA designer," said Alon Ironi, Siano's CEO. "System cost, battery life, reception performance, and design cycle duration are the factors that matter most to our customers, and the SMS1000 is optimized in all these aspects," Ironi added.
Utilizing Zero-IF technology, the SMS1001 eliminates the need for external components such as SAW filters, LNAs, or synthesizers. Similarly, the SMS1002 does not require any external memory components for the supported standards. The chip handles the entire error correction layers and channel separation processing (e.g., DVB-H MPE-FEC) on its own, without overloading the host processor. Equipped with flexible embedded interfaces such as SPI, USB, SDIO, and a comprehensive set of device drivers, the SMS1000 greatly simplifies the design-in of mobile digital TV function.
The SMS1000 will be mass-produced both as a set of separately packaged chips, and a System-in-Package (SIP) format. Siano is currently shipping samples and evaluation/development boards to selected customers.
About the Mobile Digital TV Market
Broadcast TV has been widely recognized recently as the most cost effective platform for delivering high quality, multi-channel TV services to mass audience on-the-go. New standards such as DVB-H and T-DMB have been especially developed to allow TV reception on mobile devices, which are characterized by high mobility, sub-optimal antennas, and extremely low power requirements. Consequently, top tier broadcasters, mobile operators, and handset makers have been cooperating to provide affordable mobile digital TV services, partially re-using existing infrastructure of digital TV and digital radio services. Commercial deployment of terrestrial mobile digital TV is expected to start in South Korea later this year, and in Japan, Europe, South East Asia and the US in 2006.
About Siano Mobile Silicon
Established in June 2004, Siano Mobile Silicon (www.siano-ms.com) provides integrated silicon receivers for the mobile digital TV (MDTV) market. Tailored specifically for handheld and mobile devices, the company's all-CMOS multi-standard solution overcomes formidable engineering challenges such as mobility reception, hand-offs, power consumption, form factor and small antenna. The company was founded by a group of Israeli entrepreneurs with vast experience in semiconductor modems, mobile phone architecture and digital TV systems. In March 2005 the company secured its round A of financing of $11.5M from JVP, Walden Israel, and Star Ventures. The company has more than 30 employees. It is based in Israel, with a business development office in Beijing.
