HD TV over narrow band channel
The Brief
Our client had a video distribution system for consumers that required an upgrade to support HD TV over a 300MHz coax frequency band. The main challenge was to design and demonstrate a system that could meet the requirement while keeping the bill of materials cost very low.
The Solution
Fundamentally we had to encrypt, encode, modulate, demodulate, decode and decrypt an HD TV stream and present it to the HDMI port of a TV, without breaching HDCP protocol requirements, all for a low-cost consumer electronics price point.
The narrow transmission bandwidth was only possible using a high-order QAM scheme not available in low-cost off-the-shelf components.
To meet the requirements, we created a custom design that used a combination of high-specification third-party IP elements and low-cost standard TV components. Despite the various challenges, we were able to bring all the elements together in a way that met the cost target and provided a high-quality user experience in a consumer product.
We researched and evaluated a number of candidate modulation schemes to meet the bandwidth compression requirement. On selecting a suitable scheme, we integrated a third-party modulation library with other board functions on a suitable low-cost FPGA.
We had to consider individual building block elements of the transmission system in the context of cost and performance. It was also necessary to identify solutions that would lend themselves to an integrated system-level solution that met the overall product requirements.
This required a deep understanding of every element and how they would interact.
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Fen Technology has been a valuable addition to the Xaar engineering team. They have allowed our engineers to remain focused on core developments and at the same time giving us the confidence that we can take on a greater developmental roadmap whilst retaining full intellectual ownership of all our product designs.
Fen was able to hit the ground running and, using their considerable skills and experience in Bluetooth product development, was able to quickly bring Securecom to a point where we were able to demonstrate a complete solution. As a result, we have asked Fen to continue to support Securecom towards Bluetooth Qualification and full production.
Fen has impressed us with how they have created a solution that has met both EMT’s needs of integration with our existing infrastructure and way of working, and provided a high quality feature enhancement to our product range.
Fen Technology’s skills and experience were a key factor in selecting them as a development partner. Fen’s ability to de-risk the design process was a significant benefit to us during the product development.
Fen Technology proved a worthy partner in supporting Nujira at a critical stage in the development of our leading-edge power amplification technology for the cellular infrastructure market. Fen’s experience and maturity of approach has given us the confidence to entrust them with a range of tasks that were integral to our early-stage development.
Fen’s engineers have done an excellent job in creating a sophisticated, flagship product that outperforms the competition with respect to price/performance ratio. The development methodology is mature and leads to qualitatively solid software, while Fen’s approach has been always persistent and professional.