Launched as the world's smallest and lowest-cost DAB digital radio module
available today, the Capri FS3010 has been introduced by Frontier Silicon.
The miniature surface-mount module measures only 27mm x 16m, x 2.6mm which
enables it to be fixed directly to the DAB radio system board avoiding the
need for connectors. The small size and high level of integration in the
module makes it ideal for low-power product applications such as tiny pocket
DAB players and personal media MP3 handhelds, as well as PDAs and other
portable entertainment devices, says the company.
The Capri module is based on the company's Apollo multi-band RF tuner and
Kino 2 multistandard DAB and T-DMB digital baseband processor. Complete DAB
digital radio systems can be built using Capri as a slave module controlled
by a host processor, with several host interfaces available for control and
data transport streams, including SPI, SCP, and I2S. The module receives
both L-Band and Band 3 broadcasts, enabling worldwide DAB reception.
The Apollo / Kino 2 chipset combination is based on a highly-integrated
system-on-chip architecture, with the individual chips themselves
contributing to the overall low power consumption and compact size. Apollo
measures just 5mm x 5mm x 0.9mm, making it the world's smallest RF tuner for
DAB digital radio reception, and requires very few external components. Kino
2 measures 10mm x 10mm x 1.3mm and integrates multiple peripherals and
interfaces, which simplifies interfacing to the RF tuner and host processor.
Kino 2 executes multiple multimedia and communication-based tasks concurrent
with the decoding and error correction of DAB audio and data streams. It
decodes multiple audio and data services up to the maximum 1.8Mbps, says the
company.
