The new era for home radio emerges
By Prem Rajalingham, Frontier Silicon, UK
Today, millions of people are regularly listening to their favourite radio stations via the internet through their PCs. However, with the advent of low-cost, consumer-oriented Wifi radios, from now on there will be no need to boot-up the PC.
Prem Rajalingham, Frontier Silicon
By Prem Rajalingham, Frontier Silicon, UK
Today, millions of people are regularly listening to their favourite radio stations via the internet through their PCs. However, with the advent of low-cost, consumer-oriented Wifi radios, from now on there will be no need to boot-up the PC. Instead, you will be tuning into it using your familiar portable radio, Hi-Fi system or boom box radio; an evolution in consumer electronics that we believe will help make internet radio omnipresent.
As everyone knows who has listened to it, there are major advantages to internet radio. It breaks location constraints, delivering a multitude of diverse content from all over the world and with listen again/podcast services, users are free to access their favourite programs outside of the normal broadcast schedule. With over 15,000 stations to choose from and new services, such as managed on-line music libraries, being established, it is easy to appreciate how internet radio is going to take the radio industry by storm.
The key elements of a Wifi radio or other Wifi enabled audio products are a Wifi chipset, a protocol decoder and application processor. The protocol and application processing can be combined in the same IC, as well as the user interface to make the most cost effective solution.
To make a more complete product it may also be desirable to include a traditional broadcast receiver such as FM or DAB as part of the solution so that the device is functional before the Wifi connection is set up. This will be particularly important as the market emerges to ensure that consumers can get music out of their radios while they are getting the network connection configured so reducing the number of potential returns.
The essence of enabling Wifi connectivity in everyday audio products may appear fairly straightforward with solutions taking just a few major ICs, but the devil is truly in the detail. A great deal of software expertise is needed to ensure that consumers take delivery of a reliable and easy to use product. One of the critical software elements is the audio decoder. Radio and other audio services on the internet are available using several different audio codec technologies.
A survey of the services available shows that a successful Wifi radio product must include the capability to decode MP3, Windows Media and Real Audio to provide good market coverage. There are also several protocols that are used to control the flow of data in various internet audio services, and again to be successful, a Wifi radio receiver must support a full complement of these protocols to ensure that the broadest number of services is available on the radio.
Another key area that needs to be addressed by the software is the buffer management system, to ensure minimal audio dropouts when listening to an internet station. Unlike a PC, the Wifi radio comes with limited memory and need to employ intelligent buffering strategies.
Still another fascinating part of the overall Wifi solution is the internet radio gateway. One of the potential drawbacks of a Wifi radio is the vast choice of services available. With the potential to select one out of ten thousand (or more) services, navigation through the services is a challenge, especially in a low-cost audio product with a limited user interface. One of the ways to resolve this potential problem is to use a virtual tuner. Such a tuner will aggregate the available services in a way which is understandable and manageable even on a small device like a stand alone radio by grouping services by geographical region or by genre, so allowing a listener to easily select the type of content they want.
Additional features that a virtual tuner can provide include the cataloguing of available Podcast material and also monitoring the quality of service available from specific providers, which will be important for manufacturers to ensure that a high quality is maintained. Also, a virtual tuner can allow the consumer to manage things like their “favourites” via a web page and to use the superior search capability of a PC to discover new content and then to link it to their radio.
Once an audio product is equipped with a wireless internet connection, all sorts of additional features are possible to envisage. Of particular interest is the potential to use the Wifi radio to playback audio content stored on the home PC or home media server. With the increasing number of people storing their music on their PC for playing on MP3 devices, the ability to be able to playback any song or album through a wireless device positioned anywhere in the house (or garden) has big attractions.
For information on Frontier Silicon’s Wifi radio products, go to: frontier-silicon.com/audio/
Author’s bio: Prem Rajalingham, Senior Product Manager, Frontier Silicon
As a senior product manager for digital audio products, Prem Rajalingham is responsible for delivering Frontier Silicon’s recently launched Wifi radio SOC, modules, and platforms to worldwide markets. He has over 10 years’ experience working in the semiconductor industry, designing and marketing SOCs for consumer electronics products with audio, video or communications capabilities. Prem Rajalingham graduated with a bachelor’s degree majoring in Telecommunications / Data Communications engineering, and a Masters in System Integration from University of Edinburgh, UK.
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