Atmel Rolls Out Industry's Smallest Car Radio Antenna IC With Best Noise Performance

HEILBRONN, Germany, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions, today announced the availability of a new active antenna integrated circuit (IC) designed for FM car antennas, car radios and navigation applications. Addressing the broad operating frequency range of up to 790MHz, these antennas also cover regional broadcast systems including DMB in Korea, DVB-T in Europe and the U.S. and ISDB-T in Japan. The new Atmel ATR4253 IC provides maximum integration to include an automatic gain control, supply voltage regulator with overvoltage protection and an antenna sensor in a 3 x 3mm footprint. The ATR4253 is the industry's smallest active antenna IC that enables designers to develop smaller, high-performance antenna solutions located in the car mirror, bumper, rear or side windows. The antenna detection functionality is also ideal for modern window or glass antennas, and the robust IC addresses other antenna types including pole or shark fin antennas.

With the industry's best noise performance and excellent linearity behavior, the ATR4253 addresses the two most crucial issues for designing antenna applications. Due to the impressive noise performance, the ATR4253 can also be designed as a pre-amplifier for car radios or navigation applications which require FM-RDS information. Similar to its predecessors Atmel ATR4251 and Atmel ATR4252, the new device enables crystal-clear reception without distortion even under extreme difficult and rapidly fluctuating field strength conditions typically found in moving antenna systems.

The device is equipped with a broad range of features including voltage regulation (important function when an unstabilized phantom feed is used), ESD protection, excellent system performance, and a very robust ambient temperature capability of up to 115 degrees C. In addition, the AGC avoids problems with large signals, while maintaining a high sensitivity level.

"Most modern car radios use phase diversity technology for improved reception quality, requiring two or more antennas. While the predecessor device Atmel ATR4252 handles both AM and FM frequencies, the Atmel ATR4253 is a perfect fit to support the application of a second FM antenna," explained Carsten Friedrich, Marketing Manager of Car Radio ICs at Atmel Corporation.

Availability and Pricing

Samples of the car radio antenna IC ATR4253 are now available in small-outline QFN16 packages. Pricing starts at U.S. $0.69 for quantities of 100K. To simplify and accelerate a product design, a demo board plus an application note are available under NDA.

About Atmel

Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.

© 2010 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel®, Atmel logo and combinations thereof, and others are registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Information:

More information on the Atmel car radio antenna IC ATR4253 is available at: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4847

SOURCE Atmel Corporation