Digital Broadcast Pioneer Goes Live With Xilinx Platform FPGAs
Xilinx® Flagship FPGA Family Enables Complete DVB-T COFDM Modulator Solution On A Single Chip
PARIS, FRANCE, AND SAN JOSE, CA--(INTERNET WIRE)--Jan 08, 2002-- Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX - news) and Harris Broadcast Europe, a leader in technology for the global standard Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T) market, announced today that it has selected Xilinx Inc.'s Platform Virtex(R)-II FPGA to complete successful development of its SPOT(TM) low power digital TV transmitter. The high density and large internal memory of the Xilinx FPGA allowed Harris Broadcast Europe to implement a complete Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (COFDM) modulator for DVB-T. Harris is among a growing number of customers using Xilinx FPGAs to develop products for the digital video market.
"Our product strategy involves frequent performance and functional upgrades, as digital broadcast technology is evolving rapidly," said Alain Untersee, director, product management and marketing for digital broadcasting technologies at Harris Broadcast Europe. "The flexibility and extensive reconfiguration features of Xilinx Platform FPGAs were therefore very important to the project. In addition, future enhancements can be applied in the field through a simple firmware update."
COFDM modulation is fundamental to many broadcast standards such as DVB-T, DAB, and DRM, which are being adopted in territories worldwide. As applied in the DVB-T standard widely adopted around the world, COFDM modulation has 120 modes requiring either 2k or 8k Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) and high accuracy processing. Harris has also implemented complete Reed-Solomon and convolutional coding algorithms on board the Xilinx FPGA, as well as further digital filtering to create a fully DVB-T compliant COFDM modulator. SPOT is part of a complete range of digital and analogue transmission solutions from Harris.
"This project demonstrates how the flexibility of FPGAs allows important emerging standards to become commercially successful in a short time frame," said Robert Green, Video and Broadcast marketing manager at Xilinx. "Digital broadcast standards are essential to securing the future of TV and radio markets - Xilinx Platform FPGAs met the extensive technical requirements of COFDM while providing time-to-market and design flexibility advantages that are simply not provided with an ASIC."
About Harris
ITIS (Innovation Telecommunications Image Son) was founded in 1988 and announced its first experimental DAB products in 1993, moving on to complete the first worldwide ETS compliant DAB solution by the end of 1994. Since then the company has established a leadership position in technologies for digital audio broadcasting and digital terrestrial TV, including advanced DVB-T features such as Single Frequency Network (SFN) and hierarchical modulation to maximize bandwidth utilization. ITIS is actively involved in leading research projects such as MCP (Multimedia Car Platform, integrating digital radio and TV) and IM4DTTV (terrestrial return channel for iTV). The company, which is based in Rennes, France, was acquired by Harris Corporation (NYSE: HRS - news) in 1997 for its Broadcast Communications Division, and is part of Harris Broadcast Europe, which also manufactures television and radio transmitters in Austria and the UK. Harris Corporation is an international communications equipment company focused on providing product, system, and service solutions for commercial and government customers. The company's five operating divisions serve markets for microwave, broadcast, network support, tactical radio communications, and government systems. Harris has sales and service facilities in more than 90 countries. Additional information about Harris Corporation is available at www.harris.com.
About Xilinx
Xilinx is the leading supplier of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as intellectual property cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and fulfills more than half of the world demand for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, aerospace, defense, low power portable and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com.
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Contact:
Tamara Snowden
Xilinx, Inc.
+ 44 1252 726555
Tamara.snowden@xilinx.com
Martha Rapp
Harris Broadcast Communications
217-221-7577
mrapp@harris.com |
