Aiming to get a piece of the emerging mobile TV market, fabless chip developer MediaPhy Corp., based in San Jose, Calif., has unveiled a single-chip CMOS solution for the application. In fact, the developer claims that its MP2011 Solo, is the world's first all CMOS single-die to offer true global mobile TV capability covering DVB-H, Mobile DVB-T, ISDB-T 1-3-13  segment and T-DMB/DAB standards. In addition to unparalleled mobility, the chip features a proprietary baseband architecture that enables ultra-low-power consumption, offering power savings of more than 60% when compared to current products in the market today, said MediaPhy.

With its low power consumption, global mobility and high performance, the MP2011 Solo addresses a diverse application space, spanning cell phones,laptops, PDAs, PMPs, and automotive systems and targets a market  with the potential of billions of users in the next few years, according to the manufacturer..

“Mobile TV will only be fully embraced if you are capable of delivering the expected quality with a low power device. We have accomplished this with the MP2011 Solo," stated Terry Leeder, CEO and president of MediaPhy. "Offering multi-standard capability in a single die is a significant technology advancement. Achieving such dramatic power savings in tandem with high performance and multi-standard capability is something we believe will have a significant impact on the market," he added.

“Chip suppliers that deliver superior mobile reception quality, particularly for nominally fixed technologies such as ISDB-T 13-seg and DVB-T, while offering low power dissipation have critical competitive advantages," said Joseph Byrne, a Linley Group analyst and author of A Guide to Mobile TV Chips.

The MP2011 Solo is designed from the ground up with an eye on system-level designs. Three primary design factors ensure it requires a minimal number of external components:

1. All blocks are on a single CMOS die thereby eliminating sub-block interfacing components
2. The zero-IF direct conversion radio architecture eliminates the need for bulky IF SAW filters
3. Components such as LNA, capacitors, inductors and all necessary memory blocks are integrated into the device to reduce the bill of materials (BOM) cost and enhance system performance.

Manufactured in 130 nm RF CMOS process and encased in a 7 x 7 mm package, the single-die monolithic design features a complex frequency-agile radio and unique configurable hardware engine-based architecture (CHE). This baseband architecture not only eliminates the need for a dedicated DSP and its program memory but also allows a low digital clock-speed as well as the lowest always-on power.

The result of the chip¹s unique baseband design, alongside the direct conversion (Zero-IF) architecture of the tuner, is very low power consumption in all modes. In DVB-H mode, for instance, the MP2011 Solo consumes only 20 mW. Likewsie, ISDB-T 1-seg consumes 80 mW, and power consumption in both DVB-T mobile and ISDB-T 13-seg modes is only 120 mW.

Regarding ISDB-T, Byrne added, adoption of mobile TV in Japan has been phenomenal. JEITA reports that 6.5 million 1Seg-enabled handsets--about one-fourth of all handsets--shipped in the first half of calendar 2007 in Japan. Shipments have grown at a 600% compound annual growth rate, putting the 1Seg-handset attach rate on track to achieve saturation by 2008. The Linley Group estimates that Japan will be the single-largest mobile TV market through 2011.

The chip will sample to customers in October 2007 and is expected to go into volume production in the first quarter of 2008. Other major players in this race include Newport Media, DiBcom, and Siano Mobile Silicon.