Chip Morphs AM/FM Radios Into Digital Machines
Texas Instruments (TI) is now sampling the world’s first chip capable of handling all of the baseband processing required for implementing an HD Radio.
Formerly known as In Band On Channel (IBOC), the new HD Radio platform combines TI’s DSP expertise with Ibiquity Digital’s patented IBOC digital AM and FM technology to enable radio manufacturers to build and launch new digital radio receiver sets for both home entertainment and automotive applications. HD technology-based products are expected to enter the home entertainment arena in early 2003 as well as automobile marketplace beginning in 2004.
TI’s DRI200 chip, which is based on the company’s TMS320C6000 digital signal processor (DSP) architecture, incorporates digital channel, source and data decoding and demodulation functions. In addition, TI claims that the DRI200 is flexible enough to allow for future refinements that can be added later through software upgrades.
Combining memory and interfaces on a credit card size board, Ibiquity’s IBOC Digital Module (IDM) offers the hardware and software that designers need to manage the processing of the HD Radio baseband signal. In addition, the IDM is designed to easily plug into existing AM/FM radio architectures.
The long-anticipated terrestrial transition to digital is expected to offer radio listeners significantly enhanced audio quality, equivalent to CD quality on the FM band and with new digital AM radio transmissions matching the quality already achieved by the current FM radio standard. In addition, the new HD technology will give radio stations the ability to offer new wireless data services.
HD technology has been designed to operate simultaneously with each station’s existing analog transmission and within the existing spectrum allocation. Existing radio receivers will continue to receive analog signals while new HD-based receivers will feature the ability to receive both analog and digital signals, with stations continuing to be found at their current locations on the radio dial.
The new consumer-oriented HD receivers are scheduled to become commercially available in early 2003 after taking their initial bows at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Radio stations will be able to use the technology’s wireless data service capabilities to transmit artist and song identification tags, as well as local and station information, so that it can be displayed on the front-panel screens of the new IBOC receivers.
The technology for enabling AM and FM stations to begin broadcasting their signals digitally took its inaugural bows at the NAB 2002 exhibition in Las Vegas last April, when manufacturers Harris, Broadcast Electronics (BE), and Nautel formally introduced the studio equipment that broadcasters will need to install at their stations in order to generate all-digital radio signals. Beginning in 4Q02, radio broadcasters in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Seattle will begin transmitting digital radio signals over the air.
Visteon reports that it worked with both TI and Ibiquity so that the company could create its own HD Radio product for automotive applications based on its MACH DSP digital radio technology. Visteon’s product is expected to roll out to OEMs as early as 2004. As part of Visteon’s strategic alliance with iBiquity, Visteon says that it was responsible for the original equipment model radio design.
The DRI200 is sampling right now at a price of $50 each and IDM is also available to Ibiquity’s licensed radio manufacturers. TI’s DRI200 is scheduled for volume production in 4Q02. In addition, a white paper entitled ‘The Future of Digital Radio: DSP’ is available at TI’s Web site.