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Signaling a new trend in silicon TV tuner technology, Microtune Inc. has developed a family of high-performance, ultralow-power, multiband tuners targeted for mobile hand-helds, including cell phones, PDAs and other multimedia convergence devices. The MT2260, the first member of the mobile microtuner family, is sampling with major handset manufacturers. When integrated into portable hand-held devices, the MT2260 tuner permits users to watch multichannel broadcast TV with full-motion digital pictures and CD-quality sound.

According to Microtune, the MT2260 is the first single-chip tuner that enables hand-held devices to operate across the networks allocated for mobile broadcast TV services in Europe (UHF: 470 MHz to 890 MHz) and the United States (L-band: 1670 MHz to 1675 MHz). The MT2260 tuner is fully compliant with the digital video broadcast-hand-held (DVB-H) standard, an industry specification that enables the simultaneous transmission of multiple TV, radio and video channels to mobile hand-held devices.

Based on the company's patent-pending multiband architecture that is engineered to deliver robust performance in a very low-power mobile environment, the broadband tuner is implemented in an advanced 0.35 µm silicon-germanium (SiGe) biCMOS process. It comes in a 40-pin QFN package, measuring 6 × 6-square millimeters, supporting the reduced footprint designs of mobile phone and hand-held device manufacturers. The MT2260 operates from a 2.7 V power supply and consumes as little as 20 mW in ‘viewing’ mode, depending on the severity of the reception environment. It features 9 mW power-down and 250 µW sleep modes to conserve battery power. It offers up to 10 hours of TV viewing time on two-inch or four-inch displays using 800 mAh or 1300 mAh batteries, respectively.

The MT2260 is designed to deliver high sensitivity and low distortion for excellent performance and picture quality, even under difficult DVB-H reception conditions. An integrated pre-amp filter, unique to the mobile microtuner architecture and based on the company's patent-pending ClearTune integrated filter technology, reduces interference from the mobile phone transmitter. The phone transmitter is a source of picture disruption. The tuner's high level of integration eliminates the need for an external low-noise amplifier and transformer balun, reducing component cost and the total power budget.

The MT2260 supports international DVB-H networks, enabling manufacturers to build handsets for Europe, the United States or both markets using the same tuner and common software. The tuner operates in the 1670 MHz to 1675 MHz band, the frequency range planned for a nationwide mobile broadcast TV service expected to begin deployment in select major markets in the United States later this year. It also operates from 470 MHz to 890 MHz to support the European UHF frequency range, the spectrum allocated for European mobile TV broadcast. Plus, it is fully compliant with MBRAI (DVB-H166).

A superset of the digital video broadcast-terrestrial (DVB-T) standard, DVB-H supports the transmission of digital TV content and data to hand-held devices, which have unique power, screen size, mobility and reliability requirements. The DVB-H standard introduces features and modifications to the DVB-T standard, among them time slicing and new forward error correction techniques, to enable TV reception in mobile, battery-powered devices.

MT2260 is designed to interface directly with leading DVB-H demodulators, providing handset manufacturers with design flexibility to choose the optimum tuner-demodulator combination for their needs. The microtuner MT2260 is sampling now with select handset manufacturers and will be priced at $5.00/unit in quantities of 10,000.

In the United States, Crown Castle International, a leading independent owner and operator of shared wireless infrastructures, has announced that its Crown Castle Mobile Media subsidiary plans to build and operate a dedicated digital network for broadcasting digital TV content to hand-held devices using 5 MHz of unencumbered nationwide spectrum and DVB-H. In Europe, trial networks have been established in Berlin (Germany), Helsinki (Finland) and Oxford (England) with further trials expected in other cities in France, Germany and Australia. Full commercial launches are anticipated in 2006 and ready for widespread deployment in 2007.

Microtune Inc.
Plano, Texas
(972) 673-1600
http://www.microtune.com