Livingston, UK, 21st January 2009 – Elonics announced today that it has production released what it believes is the world’s lowest power DVB-T/H terrestrial broadcast radio frequency (RF) tuner.  The E4000 consumes 105mW in continuous mode and 13mW in time sliced mode.  The E4000 uses a combination of ultra low power silicon design techniques along with state-of-the-art 130nm CMOS process technology to create a device that offers unrivalled low power consumption with world-class parametric performance.  The E4000 easily surpasses the MBRAI 2.0 requirements for mobile devices and NorDig 2.0 for DTV applications.

The E4000, which has an RF input frequency range from 64MHz to 1700MHz is unique in offering the ability to be re-configured under software control to support additional broadcast standards in the VHF, UHF and L bands.  This is important for digital TV as there is a profusion of standards across the world.  It means that manufacturers can use a single tuner across the globe, allowing them to cut development time and costs.

Mobile Digital TV Standards Supported
• DVB-H, T-DMB, CMMB (China)

Terrestrial Digital TV Standards Supported
• DVB-T, D-TMB, ISDB-T 13 Seg, ATSC

Legacy Standards Supported
• FM

Designed to interface directly to a digital demodulator, the E4000 has a fully integrated low noise amplifier (LNA), programmable RF filter, and an RF mixer providing superior real world performance.  The wide tuning range of the synthesiser and the programmable IF channel filter allows the user to cover a very wide frequency spectrum and different broadcast channel bandwidths. The E4000 tuner uses a zero IF architecture, which dramatically reduces the number of external components required and ensures that the device is suitable for high volume consumer electronics applications. 

The launch of Elonics first standard product, the E4000 CMOS tuner represents the first use of a proprietary innovative technology called DigitalTune™.   DigitalTune™ is a patent pending radio frequency architecture that uniquely allows each stage of the RF signal processing to be adjusted under digital control. This strategy has a number of benefits over traditional tuners that typically use analogue control voltages to manage the RF signal gain. As well as providing superior flexibility, it is used to adjust the performance of the tuner for optimum linearity or noise figure according to signal conditions. 

Elonics CEO, David Srodzinski said, “The E4000 represents a very significant technological milestone in the industry by offering a substantial saving on power consumption versus competing solutions without sacrificing performance.  This makes it ideal for the emerging worldwide digital TV market.  The production launch of the E4000 also represents a very significant step forward for Elonics, marking the transition to a fully fledged product manufacturing operation allowing the company to rapidly increase its sales opportunity in the high volume consumer electronics business.”

Elonics provides a complete range of E4000 support collateral including tuner reference designs, schematics and layouts.  An easy to use evaluation board and GUI is available along with software scripts for complete system control.  The E4000 is available in a Pb-free, RoHS compliant 5*5mm 32 lead QFN package.  The device is available now in production volumes.

Image attached:  Aerial view of the tuner low noise amplifier (LNA) and inductor circuits

About Elonics - “Wireless Silicon for a Digital Age”
Elonics Ltd. is a fabless mixed-signal semiconductor company specialising in the design and development of multi-band radio frequency (RF) IC products. Founded in 2003 and based in Livingston, United Kingdom, Elonics has developed an innovative radio frequency architecture called DigitalTune™ that will be the foundation for a family of re-configurable CMOS RF front end products including the E4000.

Elonics innovative technology allows manufacturers to design high performance multi-band radio transceivers with unrivalled power consumption and low system cost.  Elonics products are targeted at high volume consumer electronics applications that require wireless multi-media connectivity where size, performance, price and power consumption are paramount.