Silicon Labs has released what it claims to be the first single-die antenna-to-audio digital radio receiver devices for the global portable and consumer electronics markets. Using software-defined radio technology, the new Si468x receiver ICs bring FM, HD Radio and DAB/DAB+ broadcast capabilities to a wide range of audio applications. The new receivers support auto-calibrated digital tuning and FM seek functions based on a combination of signal quality and band parameters, and they provide flexible audio processing features including noise blanking, configurable FM soft mute, FM de-emphasis and FM hi-cut filtering.

 

The devices integrate most of the components needed to build a digital radio receiver, including the RF tuner, baseband and stereo audio DACs. The family’s wafer-level chip-scale package (WLCSP) option supports very compact designs, allowing a complete digital radio receiver system to be implemented with just 12 external components in less than 100 square millimeters of board space. Integrating the RF tuner and baseband functions on a single die avoids mutual interference and streamlines system design, validation and testing.

 

The Si468x receivers support worldwide analog FM radio reception and incorporate an integrated decoder for the European Radio Data System (RDS) and the North American Radio Broadcast Data System (RBDS) standards, including symbol decoding, block synchronization, error detection and error correction. The chip is compatible with the European Eureka 147 DAB and DAB+ standards and is designed to be fully compliant with the UK’s minimum specifications for DAB and DAB+ personal and domestic digital radio receivers.