Sigma Makes Wireless Home Theater A Reality With New Development Kit

Demonstrations at CEATEC Showcase New Windeo-Powered UWB Wireless Home Theater Audio Development Kit as Well as CoAir-Powered Ethernet-over-Coax and Wireless HDAV Kits [The following is a release from Sigma Desings]

September 30, 2008

Sigma Designs, a leader in digital media processing and wireless system-on-chip (SoC) solutions for consumer electronics today announces the availability of the Wireless Home Theater Audio Development Kit based on the company’s Windeo® Ultra wideband (UWB) chipset. Sigma will be demonstrating the Wireless Home Theater Audio Development Kit along with its new CoAir™ solution, the industry’s first UWB chipset with combined wireless, coax and Ethernet capabilities, and Wireless HDAV™ reference designs at CEATEC, September 30 - October 4, in Chiba, Japan. Demonstrations are available by appointment in the Hotel Manhattan, Suite #705. Developed for Home-Theater-in-a-Box solutions with surround systems, the development kit comes in three combinations: 2.1, 5.1 or 7.1 that range over 40 meters LOS (Line-Of-Sight) and 20 meters NLOS (Non-Line-Of-Sight). This solution gives consumer electronics manufacturers the ability to design a reliable wireless Home-Theater-in-a-Box that does not interfere with microwave oven signals, WiFi, Bluetooth, mobile phones or other home appliances. It also once and for all eliminates speaker cabling problems, like too many wires, that consumers are ready to be rid of. “Wireless Audio is the most under-served market when it comes to offering reliable wireless solutions. Sigma’s effort here is to offer OEMs and ODMs a platform that will serve the increasing consumer demand for wireless audio solutions,” said Hung Nguyen, general manager and VP, Sigma Designs Wireless Products Division. “Our development kit offers a reliable wireless surround sound solution at a lower cost for consumer electronics manufacturers that are looking to make home theater installation easy to achieve and affordable to their customers.” Based on the WiMedia™ standard, the kit uses Sigma’s all-CMOS Windeo chipset with Intelligent Array Radio technology (a sophisticated three-antennae technology that ensures no interference) to transmit the audio over the air reliably, even with several people in the room over a large distance, to accommodate almost all home theater environments. More about Sigma’s Windeo® Chipset Sigma’s Windeo is the world’s first UWB chipset in all CMOS process with three radios. It is comprised of an RF chip (B7CW101) and a Baseband IC (B7CW201) and is based on the WiMedia™ Alliance standards for MAC and PHY specifications. The Windeo chipset is currently available in production quantities. The Windeo MAC supports a 32-bit RISC processor and several host interfaces including PCI, DVB-SPI and the Peripheral (Local) Bus interfaces. More about Sigma’s CoAir™ CoAir is the industry’s first Ultrawideband and WiMedia™ standard-based chipset with combined wireless, coax and Ethernet capabilities. Developed for worldwide service providers, telcos and consumer electronics manufacturers, Sigma’s CoAir chipset is the only technology available in the world today that can simultaneously deliver multiple independent streams of video and data over coax cable, Ethernet cable and wirelessly without compromising quality of service and throughput. It is a high performance “wireless” and “no new wires” solution that can stream abundant content wirelessly and over existing coax and Ethernet wires for additional whole home coverage, up to 330 ft. CoAir is an all-CMOS solution that is comprised of an RF radio chip (Sigma’s B7CW101) and a baseband chip (Sigma’s B7CC401). The RF radio chip supports three antennas for a robust and reliable wireless link. The baseband integrates the OFDM PHY baseband, MAC – both based on the WiMedia Alliance standard – and a high performance 32-bit RISC processor. The chipset supports input/output ports for antennas, coaxial cable and Ethernet cable (CAT5). The chipset is also powered by the Transparent, Ubiquitous and Synchronous Cables & Air Network™ (TUSCAN), a patent-pending technology developed by Sigma Designs. More about Sigma’s Wireless HDAV™ Sigma’s Wireless HDAV streaming is a technology for transporting HD multimedia using standard-based encoding technologies over Ultrawideband to replace high definition audio/video cables. Sigma’s Wireless HDAV reference designs enable developers of home networking systems to eliminate cables between a television and set-top box or High-Definition DVD player using wireless HDAV, the first technology solution to support both the H.264 format and UWB based on the WiMedia standard. Wireless HDAV streams high-definition content from device to device at distances up to 10 meters.

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