Real-World Technology Ltd

RWT launches World-Wide Web site, new tuner designs

Introducing the 2000-series Tuner Card designs, the world's smallest satellite tuners, now available with analogue or digital TV demodulators for licensing to volume manufacturers of TVs, VCRs, IRD/Set-Top Boxes or Multimedia PC cards.

These tuners employ surface-mount technology on one side only of conventional FR4 PCB material, and are aligned with only a single adjustment, so there is no need for the specialised test gear and individual optimization previously associated with tuner manufacture. This means they can be mass-produced by any consumer-grade assembly plant, saving up to 50% of the cost of a bought-in tuner can.

The design features an enclosure just 5mm thick, with an internal volume of 8.2cc. It operates from a single 5V supply plus a tuning bias of 25V, and covers the frequency range 950-2150 MHz. Frequency Synthesis control is via the 2-wire I²C bus. On-board filtering ensures there is no degradation in the Euro-EMC compliance of the host apparatus.

Volume Bill of Materials cost is typically less than US $8.50 for the single-input analogue or digital versions. Options are available with 2 inputs and 2 IF bandwidths, with tuning extension down to 700 MHz, and with ultra-low phase noise for the most demanding digital applications.

Also in development: single-chip DVB-compliant channel decoder modules integrating satellite tuner with quadrature demodulator, dual ADC, QPSK carrier/clock recovery and concatenated Viterbi / R-S FEC, all on a single card. These are functionally equivalent to the IRD front-ends employed in the major digital satellite markets. Versions are planned using single-chip channel decoder silicon from three major IC manufacturers.

Pictures and specifications of these designs, plus background information on RWT and numerous satellite, space and RF-related links, may be found on our new Web site: