- 07 February, 2012
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ElectroTestExpo
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Silicon Laboratories has launched the Si4830 AM/FM receiver, an IC designed to reduce product design time and system costs as well as streamline manufacturing for a wide range of radio products such as portable radios, boom boxes, clock and lamp radios, toy radios and give-away radios.
The Si4830 is the first CMOS wheel-tuned AM/FM radio receiver IC, offering a full AM/FM radio from antenna input to audio output in a single small chip. Its high level of integration reduces the existing solution component count by more than 80 percent. Using the Si4830 will eliminate, according to the company, the need for external microcontrollers, AM/FM filters, tuning inductors and other components, significantly reducing material and labor costs. Developers need only add an antenna, mechanical-tuning and off/on volume wheels, amplification and two AAA batteries, and the Si4830 receiver becomes the platform for a low-cost radio design.
The receiver targets radio manufacturers worldwide, especially those based in China. The world's manufacturing center for AM/FM radios using traditional analog technology, China still produces more than 100 million analog radio units per year for worldwide shipment. These analog-intensive radio designs typically require dozens of discrete components and undergo significant rework and manual tuning during manufacturing and assembly. The Si4830 requires only twelve surface-mount components within a compact, 20 mm-squared single-side board area. This small design and simple board configuration further reduce cost and enable AM/FM functionality to be propagated into even more end products.
"Many manufacturers of mechanically tuned AM/FM radios have had no alternative to the labour-intensive, discrete method of building and manufacturing low-cost radios," said Dave Bresemann, vice president of Silicon Labs' broadcast products. "Our mixed-signal Si4830 receiver makes cutting-edge digital radio technology available to the analog, mechanically tuned radio market, creating new opportunities for customers to reduce manufacturing cost and add AM/FM radio functionality to a variety of consumer electronics products."
The Si4830 supports European EN55020 compliance and delivers simple, accurate and reliable tuning for worldwide FM bands from 64-108 MHz and AM bands from 520-1710 kHz.
