Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

Radio ahead: Frontier Silicon has launched its multi-region digital radio receiver

Frontier Silicon, based in Watford but with a Cambridge design centre, has launched a unified, multi-region digital radio receiver.

One of the criticisms of DAB technology was that it was only the accepted digital radio standard in the UK, Scandinavia and Australia. Frontier’s breakthrough means it now has the potential to cascade throughout the rest of Europe and Asia.

Frontier’s unified digital radio receiver module works with all existing Band 3 and L-Band digital radio standards for Europe and Asia. The new receiver addresses the market need for a solution that supports all Eureka-147 based standards, including DAB and DAB+ and DMB-Audio.

With more countries announcing frameworks for digital radio by the month, the new module reaches the market in time for manufacturers to realise significant economies of scale, enhanced functionality and rationalised international distribution for new and existing audio products.

Speaking at the Broadcast Asia conference in Singapore this week, Frontier Silicon CEO, Anthony Sethill, outlined the reasons for bringing the solution to market.

“Globally, the market has now entered a phase where flexibility is required to address the diverse standards requirements of each country – for example, the UK is driven by enhanced audio content delivered through DAB, whereas rich media content based on DMB is a priority for France, and Australia requires bandwidth optimisation using DAB+.

“With a unified receiver solution available to enable these Eureka-147 implementations in their products, manufacturers will be strongly placed to address broadcasters’ needs in each country, regardless of any variant chosen, with a single low-cost module from Frontier Silicon.”

The new module is a low cost, drop-in replacement – both electrically and mechanically – for existing products designed using the company’s successful Venice 5 module range, which already provides a basis for the vast majority of digital radio products shipped in 2007 and 2008.

It will include all interfaces necessary for a fully-functional product, needing only power supply, display, keypad, audio amplifier and speakers to complete a radio. It will start sampling in Q3 2008, and be available for volume production by the end of 2008.

Frontier customers include Bang & Olufsen, Bose, Philips, Samsung and Sony.