Siano Mobile Silicon has released its newest product in its CMMB TV receiver chip line: the SMS1186. Following up on the SMS1180, launched last year before the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, the SMS1186 is the company’s first chip to offer a complete, secure solution for emerging CMMB market business models.
The SMS1186 features -100dBm sensitivity as well as extremely high noise immunity. In addition, it includes the secure "root-of-trust" hardware (UAM) that conforms to China Mobile’s latest data security requirements. Added to the CMMB stream real-time descrambling on-chip, this makes SMS1186 a secure and cost-effective solution for the CMMB MBBMS network, because the cryptographic operations and keys are not exposed.
China Mobile operates a native Chinese TD-SCDMA 3G network, combining this with a CMMB pay-TV service. China plans to have 100 million TD-SCDMA subscribers by the end of 2011, according to Lu Dongfeng, VP at Datang Telecom Technology, a provider of TD-SCDMA products. CMMB is already deployed in 186 Chinese cities in China, and CMMB coverage will reach 300 cities by the end of 2009.
"Siano's SMS1186 integrates the entire conditional access flow inside one closed chip. The RF signal is received from the antenna on one end and outputs a clear (non-encrypted) CMMB bit stream on the other end. Competing approaches run the data decryption (descrambling) on the host CPU or the 3G baseband processor, an approach that makes the system more prone to hacking, according to Siano's CTO Roy Oren.
The SMS1186 is identical in both package and size to its predecessor, the SMS1180, simplifying device makers' transition from free-to-air to pay-TV CMMB devices. While the SMS1186 is principally designed for mobile phones and small data cards, the slightly larger SMS1188 is suitable for motherboards of netbooks, notebooks and similar devices. The SMS1186 Evaluation Kit is available now.
The new chip also offers a benefit to consumers. "With the SMS1186, end users that upgrade their terminals from GSM to TD-SCDMA will be able to keep their existing SIM cards by simply placing them in their new terminals and immediately [receive] TD-SCDMA and CMMB services," said Siano China GM Wei Wang.
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