Dr. Dobb's | Wi-Fi Chips Deliver Portable Internet Radio

Wi-Fi Chips Deliver Portable Internet Radio

A pair of U.K. companies think they have a handle on the next big thing in the audio consumer space: Wi-Fi-enabled Internet radio.

January 01, 2007
URL:http://drdobbs.com/mobile/wi-fi-chips-deliver-portable-internet-ra/196800194

LONDON — A pair of U.K. companies think they have a handle on the next big thing in the audio consumer space: Wi-Fi-enabled Internet radio. Frontier Silicon Ltd. and Cambridge Consultants Ltd. intend to use the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week to make their case.

The rivals come at the problem from different technological roots, but they agree on at least two things: Internet radio should be affordable, and it should be able to operate without a PC. Frontier (Watford, England), a pioneer in chips for digital audio broadcasting (DAB), is proffering a module equipped with the company's Chorus 2i baseband and Apollo DAB/FM tuner, a third-party Wi-Fi chip set and NAND flash memory, assembled in a ready-to-work package that lets the OEM concentrate on such issues as the box styling and the user interface.

Cambridge Consultants Ltd. (Cambridge, England) does not carry the legacy of DAB/FM. It will go to CES with the Iona Wi-Fi portable radio platform. Built around a two-chip set, Iona boasts an electronics bill of materials of less than $15, including a 112 x 64-pixel black-and-white graphic LCD. Such a BOM could allow OEMs to build consumer products retailing for around $50 to $60, the company said.

Internet radio itself is not new. In North America, Roku has been pushing its network music and Internet radio products for several years. Roku's Soundbridge, for example, powered by Analog Devices Inc.'s Blackfin DSP, plays PC or Mac digital music files anywhere in a home. In Europe, BridgeCo AG and Reciva Ltd. have pioneered Internet radio (see story, page 10).

What's new, though, is that digital radio component suppliers are now jumping on the bandwagon, determined to bring the technology to the mainstream, with mainstream consumer pricing.

Although Frontier has done well with DAB, the market for receivers for the Eureka-147 digital radio standard is still focused mainly in the U.K., despite being mandated across Europe and in many other countries. While the market is growing gradually in those areas, other parts of the world have no intention of assigning spectrum for DAB. Even in China, where DAB broadcasts are starting, it is expected to remain a relatively small market for some time.

As long ago as 2004, Frontier began pursuing the idea of adding a Wi-Fi receiver and Internet radio decoder to its existing DAB/FM offering. Frontier would then be in a position to offer all three forms of radio-- analog via FM, digital via DAB and Internet via Wi-Fi--on a module, the company's preferred way of going to market.

Although Internet radio requires, by definition, the presence of the Internet Protocol (IP), either through Wi-Fi or Ethernet, Frontier knew it was vital that it should not require the presence of a PC, said Steve Evans, vice president of sales and marketing for digital audio. "The user interface has to be something that looks like a radio interface," he said.

To that end, Frontier is working with vtuner.com, a licensable service that aggregates IP addresses and details for Internet radio stations and presents them in a form that can be used in a limited display. It also allows them to be searched by name, geography and broadcast type. "We are cooperating with them," said Evans.

The ubiquity of the Internet and growing penetration of broadband and wireless links will allow Frontier to extend its reach beyond the DAB/FM world, argued Prem Rajalingham, product manager for the digital audio division. And a decision to pursue Internet radio has another benefit: It requires no changes to Frontier's existing Chorus 2 digital baseband pro- cessor, with the engineering effort going into developing the IP packet-processing software.

The Chorus 2i baseband, due to be shown on a development board at CES, includes the Meta multithreading processor core licensed from Imagination Technologies Group plc (Kings Langley, England). This is the programmable engine for all Frontier's digital baseband chips, and Imagination remains a significant minority shareholder in the privately held Frontier. There are hardware acceleration blocks for some DAB and FM processing, said Rajalingham. "To run all the protocols on the Meta would consume too much power."

The Chorus 2, launched last August, and the Chorus 2i are made using a 0.13-micron process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. "The dif- ference between the two chips is the firmware," said Evans. The Apollo DAB/FM tuner is manufactured in a 0.35-micron process by Austriamicrosystems AG.

Evans declined to reveal who has won the Wi-Fi design-in on the new Venice 6 Internet radio module. It is due to ship in the second half, in time to fill the supply pipeline for next year's holiday buying season.

Evans leans on market estimates to show the scale of the Inter- net radio opportunity. Broadband households were estimated at 200 million in 2006, with Wi-Fi penetration of those households at about 30 percent. If only 1 percent of those households bought an Internet radio, it would translate into a market of 600,000 units. Evans sees Internet radio growing along with Wi-Fi penetration, yielding the opportunity for a 10 million-unit market in 2009.

The Venice 6 module, he said, "takes the product out of the European market, where DAB is prevalent. This is good for Asia and the U.S." The question is whether users will be prepared to pay a premium for Internet radio. "We're trying to get the overall BOM [bill of materials] of the radio down," said Rajalingham. Frontier-based DAB/FM radios sell for $40 to $120; Internet versions would retail for a bit more.

Cost cutters
Cambridge Consultants has also done its best to wring costs out of its Wi-Fi portable radio design. "Our design ethos has focused on stripping the BOM to the absolute minimum and optimizing power consumption," said Duncan Smith, head of consumer products at Cambridge Consultants, in a statement. "As a result, we believe this platform could stimulate a new category of consumer electronics product, or act as a cost-effective add-on for established product lines such as DAB and satellite radios or MP3 players, or even a product associated with a brand such as a broadband service provider."

Cambridge Consultants is planning on showing a number of potential equipment form factors for its Iona platform at CES, including wearable and tabletop designs, in the hope of getting OEMs to bite in time for the 2007 holiday buying season.

The design requires just two major ICs: an 802.11b/g device and a multimedia applications chip combining DSP capability with a 16-bit XAP processor core from Cambridge Consultants. The hardware is programmable and is capable of supporting RTP, HTTP and RDT protocols, along with MMS, MP3, WMA, AAC, AIFF and WAV data formats, and SNTP clock functionality. The platform also supports WEP, WPA and WPA2 security.

In addition to minimizing the BOM, Cambridge Consultants' de- sign focuses on reducing power consumption, allowing personal radio products to operate for up to 30 hours from two standard AA cells if the access point supports power-saving mode, or in excess of 15 hours otherwise.

"Traditional radios offer listeners the choice of relatively few stations. . . . Internet radio gives listeners access to many thousands, catering for very specific tastes from the mainstream to the exotic," Smith said. "Internet radio also allows you to tune in to your hometown station wherever you happen to be in the world."