Mobile TV chip maker Siano Mobile Silicon has announced the launch of a new family of Mobile Digital TV receiver chips called the SMS1100, following successful field trials in Europe, Japan and Korea. According to Siano, the SMS1100 raises the bar in the Mobile TV industry with respect to receiver performance, richness of features, power consumption, and global coverage.
The SMS1100, a single receiver chip, supports the reception of ISDB-T TV signals, the broadcast standard of Brazil and Japan, in addition to Sianos existing portfolio of DVB-H, DVB-T, DAB, DAB-IP and T-DMB. Siano notes that it is the only Mobile TV chip maker that provides a global footprint of Mobile TV coverage on one single chip including Russia, Western Europe, Korea, Japan, South East Asia, and Brazil, with further developments expected in China and the US.
Similar to Sianos previous generation, the new SMS1100 integrates both RF tuner and demodulator (baseband), and eliminates the need for any active external components. Another key feature is the chips exceptionally high mobility and sensitivity performance, which Siano says is unprecedented in the industry. By incorporating a new, patented, state-of-the-art channel estimation engine to the chip, Siano has raised the sensitivity and mobility performance to unparalleled industry levels. Field trials already conducted with the SMS1100 show that end users are able to watch Mobile TV in garages and other deep-indoor locations, or while riding the worlds fastest trains, such as Frances TGV or Japans Shinkansen (Bullet Train).
Siano has also broken its own world record in low power consumption, which impacts the battery life of the Mobile TV terminals. As an example, the SMS1100 consumes less than 165 milliwatts (tuner and baseband combined) when receiving High Definition TV (HDTV) over DVB-T broadcast 70% less than competing solutions, which means many more hours of watching TV with no battery re-charge.
2008 will witness the expansion of Mobile TV beyond Japan, Korea and Italy into most of Europe, South East Asia, China and Brazil, says Siano CEO, Alon Ironi. At the same time, DVB-T technology, already broadcast in over 40 countries worldwide, is now available on-the-go, with many HDTV channels set to be introduced. Whilst our previous SMS1000 chip family enabled the very first deployments of Mobile TV, the new SMS1100 will now make Mobile TV accessible everywhere, in crystal-clear quality. This product is the locomotive that will pull the entire industry and unleash the huge potential of the Mobile TV market.”
The SMS1100 family can be tailored for several different specific markets and applications. For example, the SMS1150 addresses global Mobile TV notebooks, with a high-speed USB 2.0 interface and full MRC diversity support, while the SMS1130 targets DVB-H mobile phones.
The SMS1100 is available in samples now, with mass-production later this quarter. All members of the SMS1100 family are delivered in the same BGA package, 6.2 x 6.5 x 1 mm in size, with 131 pins. Siano will demonstrate the SMS1100 at the CES trade show in Las Vegas, which runs from 7 10 January, on booth number 6538MP, LVCC, North Hall. 
