Thanks to the Freescale Semiconductor solution for digital video broadcast to handheld devices (DVB-H), cell phone users seeking rich multimedia TV-style feeds such as entertainment services, sports, news, Web pages, music, rich advertisements and broadband Internet may soon be using their cell phones as TV receivers. Freescale is making digital video broadcast capabilities possible on cellular handsets and other handheld communication products via the development of very low-power tuner integrated circuits. The Freescale DVB-H tuner is designed to meet specification requirements for major global markets. The tuners are engineered to achieve very low power consumption by using the same direct conversion technology used in Freescale’s wideband code-division, multiple-access (W-CDMA) transceivers.

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The upcoming DVB-H standard uses a terrestrial broadcast network based on the widely deployed DVB-T standard. This allows the cellular handset to receive IP data from the network, using a cellular link as a return channel for data and interactive applications. The DVB-H standard is a complement to 2.5G and 3G cellular networks, providing the high bandwidth necessary to implement these applications.

“Our direct conversion, zero intermediate frequency (ZIF) approach, allows for very low power consumption and reduced part count,” said Thierry Cammal, EMEA general manager of Freescale’s Wireless and Mobile Systems Group. “This leads to extended battery life, in a small form factor that can easily be integrated and a solution that is in harmony with DVB-H enabled handset requirements. This is generating tremendous interest among major handset manufacturers.”

The Freescale RF receivers are part of a front-end reference design currently in development that is capable of implementing DVB-H connectivity in a wide variety of wireless end products, as well as DVB-T in set-top boxes. The Freescale receivers are currently sampling to a wide cross section of mobile manufacturers and industry enablers participating in several DVB-H field trials around the world--production units are expected to be available in Q1 2005.