Broadcom develops 1GHz full band cable tuner for fast channel changes

40nm DOCSIS3.0 tuner with full 1GHz bandwidth 
By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Broadcom has developed a tuner for cable TV systems that spans the whole 1GHz bandwidth, replacing multiple tuners and providing a fast channel change regardless of the frequency.
It has integrated the industry's first 1GHz Full-Band Capture digital tuning technology into three new 40nm hybrid IP cable set-top box (STB) and DOCSIS 3.0 gateway SoC solutions. These deliver the cable tuner density and performance that operators need to convert current cable systems to IP-based video platforms. This provides scalable bandwidth while reducing power, cost and simplifying cable tuner design while accelerating the deployment of DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateways and hybrid IP cable STBs. Hybrid IP cable STBs will more efficiently bring additional video streams and IP services to connected devices in the home ecosystem and are expected to grow at 40 percent through 2014. 

"Driving the next frontier in cable TV, Broadcom's breakthrough in tuner design reduces the cost to transition current cable platforms to hybrid IP-based solutions, proliferating IP content delivery and services throughout the home and to connected devices," said Dan Marotta, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Broadcom's Broadband Communications Group.

The FBC technology directly digitizes the entire 1GHz downstream spectrum, replacing the need for a large number of tuners with only one FBC digital tuner. Full-Band Capture technology advantages include:

• Digital tuning: engineered with new enhanced signal processing techniques that exceed the most challenging performance requirements demanded by operators.
• Bandwidth deployment flexibility: any demodulator can tune to any frequency removing wideband "block" tuner restrictions.
• Reduced power consumption: more than 50 percent reduction with new tuner architecture.
• Faster channel change: FastRTV channel change technology paired with Full-Band Capture provides quick channel change regardless of frequency.
• Reduced system cost: dramatically minimizes the number of components by replacing up to nine cable tuners in a system with only one FBC digital tuner supporting as many demodulators as required.

Broadcom's 40nm 8-QAM BCM3128 and 4-QAM BCM3124 cable multi-receiver SoCs and the 400 Mbps BCM3383 Euro/DOCSIS 3.0 cable gateway SoC are the industry's first fully integrated solutions to support FBC technology and are now shipping to customers.