CSR also has entered the car radio tuner front-end market with tuneX to provide a cost-effective software-defined radio (SDR) solution for the in-vehicle environment. The new pin-compatible front-end tuner chip integrates both hardware and a software library making it perfectly suited for car radio, display audio, infotainment, receiver box and smart antenna applications. This software/hardware hybrid system allows OEMs to differentiate their radio products and fine-tune performance parameters at the front end.
Anthony Murray, Senior Vice President, Business Group at CSR, said: “Car owners expect to be able to safely control every aspect of their driving experience, from music and communications to tire pressure monitoring and in-vehicle lighting, at the touch of a button. The challenge has been to meet this demand for a multitude of connected features with a single automotive-ready solution. CSR, with its years of automotive connectivity, location and infotainment experience, has been working closely with automakers to establish new levels of configurability and flexibility with the CSRatlas7 and tuneX solutions. We offer several integrated platforms designed to work seamlessly and securely with the rest of the automobile that also reduce BOM costs and speed their time to market.”
CSRatlas7 offers automobile manufacturers a highly integrated, cost-effective, pre-packaged Display Audio solution designed to meet the challenging complexity and interoperability requirements of the industry. By integrating infotainment, connectivity and location features in a single turnkey system on a chip (SoC) solution for the in-vehicle environment, CSR enables the cost-effective extension of exciting new and competitive features usually associated with high-end vehicles, to entry and mid-level cars.
The application processor has a dual-core CPU and GPU architecture with integrated peripherals, including Bluetooth, Software Defined Radio (SDR), GNSS baseband, an audio DSP and high quality audio-codecs components. The widely adopted CSR aptX audio codec is integrated and enables high quality wireless audio streaming. To ensure the most reliable navigation, CSR SiRFDrive technology offers improved positioning accuracy to aid smartphone navigation apps.
The turnkey software and hardware solution is available with a number of differentiating software stacks including: CarPlay and Mirrorlink for streaming multimedia between the external devices and the in-vehicle infotainment system; cVc for high fidelity audio over hands-free applications; and SDR with tuneX front ends that support all worldwide radio standards. The chipset comes with a pre-integrated and qualified software package to greatly reduce the complexity for infotainment system providers.
“We are extremely pleased to have CSR join the HD Radio family of partners,” said Jeff Jury, COO of iBiquity Digital, the developer of HD Radio Technology for AM and FM audio and data broadcasting. “CSR is a leading supplier of solutions to the automotive industry and as HD Radio technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous, integrated solutions, such as CSR’s Atlas7 platform, will ensure consumers get the best possible infotainment experience in their new cars.”
New tuneX pin-compatible front-end tuner chip
“The tuneX products enable the use of a single worldwide hardware platform that performs ‘regionalization’ and differentiation in the software, enabling new levels of configurability, flexibility and portability for the OEM and a “future proof” radio for consumers. The combination of hardware and a SDR software library makes tuneX perfectly suited for car radio, display audio, infotainment, receiver box and smart antenna applications,” continued Anthony Murray, Senior Vice President, Business Group at CSR.
The pin-compatible front-end tuner chip offers leading RF performance across all radio standards including AM/FM, DAB, T-DMB, DRM and HD Radio, eliminating the need for OEMs to implement dedicated hardware for each region.
The current market for car radios forces localization, with multiple digital standards deployed on a regional basis. In the tuneX solution regionalization and differentiation are performed in the software element. Demodulation is migrated from the hardware element to software and eliminates the need for a dedicated car radio processor, while processing is carried out on the SoC’s RAM and Flash memory systems. This further simplifies the development, qualification and purchasing cycle and allows OEMs to differentiate their radio products and fine-tune performance parameters at the front end. This can also result in a less expensive SDR car radio.
Software offers OEMs the flexibility to tweak performance, enable field upgrades for new services or patches and add future additional features. Consumers will own a future-proof car radio that is software upgradable and highly configurable.
Another advantage is support for concurrent reception and scalability benefits when moving from single tuner to multi-tuner concepts. tuneX leverages system memory when a user changes to an alternative radio channel. As soon as two or more standards are received concurrently in a dual or multi tuner design, the signals are available in the software audio buffers and users can blend between channels immediately with no noticeable audio delay.
CSR offers tuneX front-ends or tuneX software demodulators as standalone products or as part of a fully integrated radio package on the newly released CSRatlas7 platform. CSR can also offer tuneX as a solution working on a third-party platform.
CSRatlas7 Product Details
Key features of the CSRatlas7 (CSRS3703 BGA Automotive):
· Dual-core Cortex A7
· Vehicle Controller Cortex M3
· 8/16-bit DDR3/DDR3L support
· Advanced 3D graphics accelerator
· Full 1080p HD multi-format video decoder
· Bluetooth v4.2 specification
· Software Defined Radio demodulators and accelerator
· Multi-Constellation GNSS engine
· Integrated Audio DSP
· Multi-channel audio codec
· AEC-Q100 grade 3
tuneX Product Details
Key features of the hardware frontend include:
· Three front end variants addressing global multi-standard requirements
o tuneX AM/FM: AM, FM, WX, DRM and HD
o tuneX DAB: DAB
o tuneX Hybrid: AM, FM, WX, DRM, DAB and HD
· tuneX front ends provide a digital data stream
o Flexible output data interface supporting SDIO / JESD204B / I2S to interface with application processors
o Unique CSR tuner / SoC SDIO interface results in low pin count
· Low solution cost with minimum external BOM
o No external tracking and channel select filter, crystal sharing etc.
Key features of the software demodulators include:
· Available software demodulators save NRE costs
o Rich featured AM / FM / RDS demodulator
o Fully validated automotive DAB / DAB+ / T-DMB solution
o iBiquity certified HD Radio™ system (HD1.0, 1.5 + MRC)
· No dedicated, additional DSP – analog and digital software demodulators run on CSR’s Infotainment SoCs
· Open SDR framework
o The SDR framework is a portable set of software interfaces and components available for CSR SoCs
o Support of multi-standard receiver instances and runtime demodulator switching for different standards
o Available for CSR SoCs under Linux and Android
www.csr.com/products/csratlas7
www.csr.com/products/tunex
