Combined MP3, DAB walkman products should hit the market in the second half of next year, Coppisetti said.
Digital Radio Comes Back to Earth
FCC to evaluate IBOC standard
By Steven Fyffe -- Electronic News, 10/15/2001
A digital radio circuit board from Texas Instruments Inc.
As the In-Band On-Channel (IBOC) standard for terrestrial digital radio moves into the approval phase in the United States and other digital radio efforts ramp up in the rest of the world, semiconductor companies are positioning themselves to grab a piece of what could be a massive market.
Texas Instruments Inc. is thinking big.
"Today we have AM and FM radio," said Naresh Coppisetti, business manager for digital radio at TI (nyse: TXN). "Just like cell phones and cameras--all that is going digital. The move from analog to digital transmission must happen. We know that. If you agree with that, then why not be involved early in the transition?
"More than 300 million radios are sold each year worldwide. It is the second or third largest volume market after cell phones," he said.
And the similarities to the cell phone market don't end there. Like the fragmented cell phone industry, proponents of digital radio have split into different standardization camps across the world.
Europe and Canada have adopted the Eureka 147 Digital Audio Broadcasting standard, and Asia looks set to climb on board as well.
As usual, the United States' spectrum squeeze has forced the country to take a different tack. Columbia, Md.-based intellectual property (IP) company iBiquity Digital Corp. is building its business on the hope that the U.S. market will rally around its proposed IBOC standard, which is set to be sent to the Federal Communications Commission for final approval early next year.
On top of these standards, XM Satellite Radio Inc. launched its proprietary service in select U.S. markets in late September, and rival Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. is expected to launch its own service soon.
iBiquity has recruited a strong roster of chipmakers to its cause, including TI, Philips, STMicroelectronics and Agere Systems.
Those four allies have split into two main factions based on their historical design strengths and customer needs. "There are two basic design approaches," said Ben Benjamin, co-chief operating officer of iBiquity. "There is the typical DSP approach that gives a shortend product realization time because you can upgrade the software. Then there is the ASIC approach that optimizes the chip size and gives you somewhat lower cost, but it is less flexible for changing feature sets."
Eindhoven, Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics and Geneva-based STMicroelectronics Inc. are both working on drop-in ASIC chipsets so car radio OEMs can take out the current chip and slot the new one in without having to drastically modify the whole radio design, Benjamin said.
"It takes a while to put a new design into a dashboard, and that is one way to get around it--fitting a new IC into an existing footprint."
Car radios are the first big target for chipmakers in the digital radio market, Benjamin said. Philips and STMicro are hoping their strength in auto electronics will translate into a first-mover advantage in terrestrial digital radio.
"Sixty percent of Americans spend 21 hours a week listening to the radio in their car," Benjamin said.
Allentown, Pa.-based Agere Systems Inc. and Dallas-based TI are attacking the market from a more purist DSP angle. While ASICs are traditionally cheaper in high volumes, TI believes its experience in the cell phone market will help make its DSPs cost competitive.
"We were able to do it in cell phones, why can't we cost reduce the thing and be a real player in the DAB market?" Coppisetti said. "Cost is everything if you want it to be a mass market. We are playing very well in the cell phone market, and it is very similar to digital radio."
In Europe, TI currently sells a baseband processor, based on its C5000 core, bundled with 12 other analog components for $15 to $17.50. Other components are needed to make a functioning digital radio, including an RF chip, memory and passive components. But TI claims OEMs can manufacture digital radio boom-boxes, using the licensable reference design it developed with London-based RadioScape Ltd., for less than $200.
According to market research firms, consumers should be willing to pay for the better-quality sound and limited data-casting capabilities of IBOC terrestrial digital radio when the price comes within $100 of conventional analog radio, Benjamin said.
In contrast to satellite digital radio, which will offer around 100 channels nationwide for a monthly subscription, terrestrial digital radio in the United States will be free, piggybacking on the current AM-FM system.
"We see terrestrial radio as largely a local phenomenon," Benjamin said. "Most people use it because they can get information, entertainment and local advertisement."
TI is also exploring the possibilities of combining a portable digital radio with an MP3 player, Coppisetti said.
"A digital walkman would be very easy," he said. "MP3 decoding can be done on the same chip as the baseband. We think that the convergence of MP3 and DAB is going to be a powerful proposition for consumers. You have MP3 instead of a cassette, and you can record DAB music onto a flash card.
"TI is very uniquely positioned in this convergence because of the programmable nature of our baseband processor," he said.
Power consumption is the major technical hurdle to creating the all-in-one digital walkman, Coppisetti said. "Our target is to run the walkman on two AA batteries," he said.
Combined MP3, DAB walkman products should hit the market in the second half of next year, Coppisetti said.
