Single chip radio
Silicon Laboratories has launched what it claims to be the first integrated am/fm receiver. Requiring just two external components, the Si473x can be added with relative ease to a range of consumer focused products.
Although the emphasis on am radio may seem misplaced, SiLabs disagrees. “AM radio is popular for music, news, sports and talk formats, has wide coverage and a large installed base of stations worldwide,” said Tyson Tuttle, vice president of Silicon Laboratories. “We have leveraged our cmos rf and mixed signal expertise to engineer an easy to design, cost effective, high performance solution, which will enable manufacturers to offer both am and fm receivers in a variety of applications, including mobile handsets and MP3 players.”
Interestingly, the Si473x is described as the only am/fm receiver that does not need manual alignment. It also supports the European Radio Data System and the US Radio Broadcast Data System. This allows data such as the station ID and song name to be displayed on an lcd.
