NXP Semiconductors Previews Industry's First Broadband Sigma-Delta Converter
First-of-a-kind technology will enable personalized in-car radio experience for all passengers
Today, NXP Semiconductors, the industry leader in digital signal processor technology for car radios, announced the industry’s first broadband Sigma-Delta converter that digitizes all FM radio channels simultaneously, rendering a 100-times increase in performance. The cascaded Sigma-Delta converter enables a wide range of unique in-dash car radio functions and broadband wireless applications, such as Software Defined Radio. This Sigma-Delta converter technology was highlighted in a paper presented by NXP Research scientists this week at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.
The NXP Sigma-Delta converter eliminates the need for radios to individually filter each FM radio channel. This enables every passenger in the vehicle to listen to a different radio station or source simultaneously with a single in-dash car radio using wired or wireless headsets. The NXP Sigma-Delta converter also supports applications like frequency diversity, in which the strongest FM signal is detected and selected while broadcasting the chosen channel and radio data streaming (RDS) to supply the consumers with more information related to their programming.
“NXP is committed to providing consumers with new and exciting ways to enjoy media anytime, anywhere, including in their cars,” said Leo Warmerdam, senior director, research, NXP Semiconductors. “Our ground-breaking research program focused on broadband Sigma-Delta converter architectures will reshape what consumers expect from their car audio experiences and holds the promise of revolutionizing many other wireless applications.”
The Sigma-Delta converter is based on a continuous-time quadrature cascaded architecture, exploiting the lower over-sampling of the converter to boost the signal bandwidth to unprecedented frequencies. NXP expects this innovative architecture to produce significant performance enhancements in the coming years. When applying the Sigma-Delta converter’s cascaded architecture to car radio, NXP’s solution enables the complete 20 MHz FM radio band to be digitalized accessing all 101 U.S. radio channels (100 in Europe) simultaneously.