Conventional TV and radio tuners are intrinsically inflexible. Each broadcast standard has traditionally been served by separate radio receivers comprising an RF tuner and a digital demodulator. This makes them unable to meet the new challenges of today's cost conscious multi-tasking and multi-standard consumer products.

The ideal solution is a single flexible RF tuner capable of receiving signals ranging from low MHz to GHz. The Elonics' DigitalTune™ multi-band tuner technology does exactly that, replacing the need for multiple tuners with a single re-configurable RF CMOS IC.

The direct conversion zero IF architecture is designed to save power and lower system cost. It eliminates the requirement for expensive and bulky external components such as SAW filters and RF baluns, yet offers extremely high performance.

Elonics is developing a family of tuner ICs following on from the introduction of the world leading E4000 multi-standard RF front end, building upon its leadership in multi-media RF connectivity solutions.

DigitalTune™ RF Tuner Architecture

At the heart of Elonics tuner is DigitalTune™, 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 programmability and flexibility, it can be used to adjust the performance of the tuner for optimum linearity or noise figure according to the signal conditions. DigitalTune™ also helps overcome some of the inherent process limitations of CMOS, and allows Elonics to utilise its benefits to lower power consumption and silicon cost.

The DigitalTune™ architecture has a number of distinct advantages when applied to the design of consumer electronics devices. In today's world of multiple broadcast standards, the digitally programmable capability of the Elonics tuner technology allows our devices to cover multiple frequency bands with a single integrated low noise amplifier (LNA) instead of the multiple LNAs used in traditional tuner systems.

The DigitalTune™ concept is an integral part of the evolution in radio receiver design, allowing designers to implement CMOS RF front ends capable of cost effectively supporting multiple broadcast standards, meeting the challenge for smaller, lighter, cheaper and lower power consumer electronics.