Digital Radio

Block Diagram

Design Considerations
Digital radio is taking the old broadcast medium into the digital age with crystal-clear music, hundreds of new stations, on-demand radio, surround sound, rewind radio and more. TI with its strategic partners provide ready-to-go modules and reference designs for digital radio applications such as: automotive, home, portable and home hi-fi applications.
TI and its strategic partners, RadioScape and iBiquity, provide low-risk, cost-effective solutions for a quickly changing digital radio market.
TI's Solutions include:
Analog Front End: AFEs are built around a high-speed ADC, and often include Low-Noise Amplifiers (LNA), frequency synthesizers, and high-speed Op-Amps. The LNA boosts the RF signal from the antenna. The frequency synthesizer generates a Local Oscillator (LO) signal that is mixed with the RF input to form the IF signal. The high-speed ADC converts the IF signal into digital samples. Depending on the speed of the signal the DAC outputs as compared to what the DSP or microcontroller can handle, a Digital Down counter may be required.
Power management: The power supply is connected to the 12V or 24V board net and regulates down/up to voltages for DSP, uC, memory and ICs and functions in the infotainment system. In some cases there may be 10 or more different power rails, making the design of the power supply a critical task when trying to design for size, cost and efficiency. Linear regulators with low quiescent current help reduce battery leakage current during standby operating modes (ignition off), are load dump voltage tolerant for directly battery connected devices, and need low drop out and tracking for low battery crank operation.
Beyond providing increased conversion efficiencies, switching power supplies provide EMI improvement with slew rate control of the switching FET, Frequency hopping, spread spectrum or triangulation method for attenuation of peak spectral energy, Low Iq, soft start for power... [continues]

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