RadioScape extends Software Defined Radio solutions to additional DSP platforms and announces plans to support new ADI BF52x series for Mobile TV
RadioScape announced today that it plans to extend the range of programmable semiconductor platforms that will support its proven software radio solutions. Having already had significant success in developing a broad range of software, module and subsystem solutions for the DAB digital radio market based on Texas Instruments DSPs, the company believes that in emerging digital radio segments there will be demand for its proven stacks and applications for DAB, DMB, DAB-IP, DRM, FM and AM on other platforms. The first of these will be the Analog Devices Blackfin® BF52x series of processors, announced today.
John Hall, RadioScapes CEO, commented: A significant strength of the Company, since inception 10 years ago, has been our ability through our Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach to quickly incorporate new standards as well as the embedded applications that make these standards user friendly in a consumer device. As digital radio finds its way in to all manner of consumer products such as cell phones, PCs, personal media players, in car entertainment systems, in addition to the more traditional radio products we see today, device manufacturers are looking for much more innovative solutions. In some cases this will simply be a software load for an embedded processor already in the consumer device, and in some cases it will be for the entire broadcast receiver subsystem. By extending our support for new platforms we will be able to satisfy a broader range of radio and mobile TV applications.
In conjunction with the announcement by Analog Devices (ADI) today of its new BF52x family, RadioScape has announced that it has developed a highly integrated software implementation of its DAB baseband decoder and audio video decoder for this new platform to address the emerging mobile TV market. This has already been demonstrated to potential customers and initial products will be available later this year. (See separate release). This work paves the way to include the ADI platform across the range of RadioScapes digital radio solutions in the future.
Hall added: Our selection of additional platform partners is driven by two key considerations. First there has to be a great fit in terms of feature set and price against our roadmap requirements. Second, there has to be a strong alignment in strategic market focus between the two companies we want our partners to be as committed to growing the digital radio and mobile TV sectors as we are. That means they will continue to invest in developing optimised silicon platforms for the future.
Andrew Dewhurst, RadioScapes Product Manager for Receiver Solutions, added: The radio of the future will increasingly be part of a multi-standard, multi-media device. The challenges of supporting such broad functionality as well as the integration of the radio with other device features is significantly reduced through the SDR approach. We now have a highly portable code base and this gives us the opportunity to engage with other semiconductor partners as we develop our roadmap. This enables us to increasingly focus our resources on new applications and solutions for system level integration of digital radio.
RadioScapes SDR approach
Radio is enjoying a renaissance with increased listening figures according to RAJAR as new ways to listen to radio become available such as cell phones, TVs via Set Top Boxes, Internet, Home Cinema, Personal Media Players, etc. This is opening up new business opportunities for RadioScape plc to add Digital Radio functionality to these devices by using its unique Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach, which it has pioneered so successfully to create a range of award winning, DAB and DRM radio receiver solutions.
RadioScape was founded over ten years ago on the principle of using software to create Digital Radio solutions. This unique SDR approach has enabled the company to pioneer the development of both broadcast and receiver technology where upgrades and enhancements are often made simply through software uploads. This allows future proofing of both existing and new designs.
The use of SDR allows receiver solutions to be quickly tailored to individual customer and product requirements. This ensures that products can have differentiating features while also reaching the marketplace in the minimum time.
RadioScape extends Software Defined Radio approach to Mobile TV using ADIs Blackfin Processor and achieves significant system level savings compared to todays solutions
RadioScape plc is extending its leadership in Mobile TV broadcast technology with the addition this year of solutions for Mobile TV receivers, which will be based on the latest additions to the Blackfin® processor family from Analog Devices (ADI). Announced today these new, high performance, low power processors will enable RadioScape to integrate the DAB baseband decoder and the audio video decoder onto a single platform. This provides a clear saving in costs while being very competitive on space and power compared to the conventional approach today of having these on two separate chips.
RadioScape is leveraging its extensive Digital Radio systems knowledge, which comes from being the only, end-to-end technology provider for DAB, to focus on creating Mobile TV (MTV) receiver solutions based on the Eureka 147 DAB standard, including the T-DMB and DAB-IP standards. DAB-based standards have been adopted for MTV in many parts of the world as they use spectrum that is already available and provide robust reception. RadioScapes initial MTV solutions will provide DAB/T-DMB and DAB-IP reception as well as DAB radio. Its Software Defined Radio (SDR) approach means that it can add additional standards as appropriate to meet market demands and create multi-standard MTV solutions.
Using our tightly integrated solution of DAB radio and MTV in mobile phone handsets or Personal Multimedia Players will enable many features and applications to be created in software that will further enhance the user experience, said Les Sabel, RadioScapes VP of Technology. These include music downloads, Electronic Programme Guide, picture downloads, broadcast websites, interactive voting and games, and other user specified feeds such as sport, news, traffic, and weather. Our Software Defined Radio approach also allows service providers to deliver value-added applications to existing customers though software updates in the field.
RadioScapes solution integrates both the Eureka 147-based, baseband decoder software (including DAB audio, DAB data, T-DMB and DAB-IP) with the Audio and Video decoders (H.264 video and MPEG 4 for both AAC+ and BSAC audio) into a single software solution. This approach provides significant cost savings over traditional multiple ASIC designs while maximising the flexibility of MTV and Digital Radio solutions, said John Croteau, General Manager, Convergent Platforms & Services Group, at ADI.
The use of SDR allows MTV and Digital Radio solutions to be quickly tailored to individual customer and product requirements. This ensures that products can have differentiating features while also reaching the marketplace in the minimum time. The SDR approach also allows future proofing for both existing products and new designs. New product designs can be generated through the addition of a number of multimedia features (such as pause, rewind, record and cache service) and, in addition, the Blackfin has the flexibility to be either the system master or a slave coprocessor.
The ADI investment in technology development and their evolutionary path provides an excellent route to lower cost, lower power solutions that will have backward compatibility with previous product generations. This continuity in the development process minimises the total cost of ownership by improving product development efficiency relative to traditional approaches where ASIC hardware changes cause significant costly and time-consuming rework, added Les Sabel.
RadioScape is now demonstrating this advanced MTV solution to lead customers.