HD Radio processor chip adds high quality digital AM and FM reception to Philips software CarDSPs
Royal Philips Electronics announced a highly integrated dedicated HD Radio processor to meet the growing demand for automotive HD Radio sets. HD Radio technology allows digital radio signals to ride the same airwaves as analog AM/FM radio signals. For stations broadcasting HD Radio signals, a SAF3550-equipped radio provides listeners with high-quality digital AM/FM music experience. To date, the SAF3550 processor is the most cost- effective automotive HD Radio solution on the market.
Today, 15 leading radio set-makers have licensed iBiquity Digital's HD Radio technology and over 280 broadcast stations in the United States have licensed this technology. According to the Yankee Group, approximately 20 million HD Radio sets will be shipped in the next five years. Philips' SAF3550, along with iBiquity's HD Radio technology, allows listeners to enjoy the full experience of static-free high-quality digital sound in the car. It also enables listeners to receive wireless data services such as song title, artist and album name. In addition, Philips' SAF3550 is designed to support future functionalities such as a second audio program channel, several minutes of replay functionality for a message or song that was missed, and increased data services to enable a variety of consumer applications like customized station and program content, stock and news information, local traffic and weather and more.
Philips' new HD Radio processor, SAF3550, is a highly integrated digital integrated circuit (IC) that utilizes fewer components to demodulate and process HD Radio signals in automotive applications compared to existing solutions in the market. The SAF3550 adds HD Radio's further digital capability to Philips' line of existing digital signal processing products for car radios (CarDSP). Philips' CarDSPs deliver more than 650 million instructions per second (MIPS) of processing power used to digitally process and enhance both the IF and the audio signal of current AM/FM car radios. For HD radio processing, the SAF3550 adds more than 100 MIPS to the system.
Availability
Samples of the SAF3550 are currently available from Philips. The SAF3550 chip will ship in volume in early 2004.
