Seven Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Developing Radios Using Agere Systems Chip Set for Sirius Service
FOR RELEASE MONDAY JUNE 25, 2001
ALLENTOWN, Pa.- Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A), the world leader in communications semiconductors, today announced that seven consumer electronics manufacturers--Alpine, Clarion, Delphi Delco, JENSEN, Kenwood, Panasonic and Visteon--are developing radios that include Agere's chip set capable of receiving broadcasts from Sirius Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI).
Agere has shipped engineering samples of the chip set to all seven manufacturers. Production chip sets are expected to be shipped in early fall of this year. The satellite radios are designed to give the nation's more than 200 million vehicles access to Sirius' up to 100 channel audio entertainment service, which includes 50 channels of commercial-free music and 50 channels of news, sports, talk, comedy and children's programming.
"Agere's chip set is the culmination of the development and integration of innovative technologies that have been custom-designed for satellite radio," said Bob Rango, general manager of new business initiatives for Agere Systems. "Working closely with Sirius and radio manufacturers on this chip set was key to developing the critical feature and performance mix needed to make this new mobile audio application technically feasible and able to deliver digital quality radio to listeners."
The integrated chip set combines a unique set of technologies that enable mobile reception of satellite signals. These technologies include the dynamic combining of a coded orthogonal-frequency division multiplexed (COFDM) band for signals broadcast from ground antennas; and two time-division multiplexed quadrature phase shift keyed (TDM-QPSK) bands to reliably receive signals broadcast from three satellites.
Agere's chip set combines radio and intermediate frequency (RF/IF) demodulation, analog-to-digital conversion (ADC), complex digital signal processing and control functions, and digital audio decoding--all in a single, complete integrated chip set, implementing three concurrent receivers. The chip set's wideband RF circuits allow receivers to demodulate a 12.5 Megahertz (MHz) spectrum in the S-band (2.3 GHz), consisting of two TDM satellite signals and a COFDM terrestrial signal. Each of these signals carries identical information and is demodulated with the full aggregate payload. This redundancy allows reliable reception through use of an innovative maximal ratio combiner (MRC), which proportionally combines the three signals for optimal quality. An innovative buffer management scheme addresses problems unique to satellite reception such as resolving Doppler and time delay.
The high sound quality of the new receivers is enabled by Perceptual Audio Coding (PAC), developed by Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, and commercialized by Agere Systems for this digital radio application. Named satellite PAC (sPAC)*, the technology processes and digitally compresses high fidelity stereo music (stereophonic audio) and monophonic audio transmission (such as talk radio) from 1.41 Mbits/s to bit rates as low as 24 Kbits/s. Data transmission modes are also supported for future telematics applications such as traffic advisories. The high compression of the sPAC technology enables up to 100 channels of programming to be transmitted simultaneously. In addition, a statistical multiplexer integral to sPAC ensures that each channel is transmitted in high quality by assigning the available bandwidth to channels with the greatest need.
Agere's chip set processes the aggregate multi-channel, encrypted, and error correction coded satellite and terrestrial signals to decode any one of 100 audio channels. Each channel is decoded with audio as well as program descriptive text, such as channel name, song title, and song artist. Receivers designed with the Agere chip set will be able to capture digital signals from satellites and terrestrial repeaters broadcasting Sirius' service. The Sirius transmission system uses three independent transmission signals, two from satellites at any given moment and one terrestrial. Each contains an audio bandwidth of approximately 5.0 Mbits/s. By transmitting with time, frequency, modulation, and space diversity, these independent transmission signals will help assure robust reception virtually anywhere, anytime in the continental U.S.
Agere Systems Inc., formerly the Microelectronics Group of Lucent Technologies, is the world leader in semiconductors for communications applications. Lucent has announced it intends to spin off Agere Systems as an independent company. Agere Systems offers integrated optoelectronics and integrated circuits solutions to help customers reduce the time and expense of developing new communications equipment. It also provides wireless computer networking solutions through its ORiNOCO product line. More information about Agere Systems is available from its Web site at www.agere.com.
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