1997-06-09 , E/IC-825/410

At the Asia Telecom '97 Exhibition in Singapore (June 9-14), Philips Semiconductors provides the first demonstration of its new PCD5008H FLEX™ paging decoder.

The demonstration shows the possibilities of FLEX™ paging and the IC's power-saving performance. For pager manufacturers, interest in the PCD5008H's performance is further boosted by the knowledge that it is now available in full production quantities, and it has just been designed into the FLEX™ pager with the longest standby time.

In the reference-design demonstration, the PCD5008H forms the heart of the pager system. By providing sophisticated control for off-the-shelf 4-level FSK pager receivers, and easy interfacing to many microprocessors, the PCD5008H offers a fast and simple solution for FLEX™ - today's most common high-speed (6400 bit/s) paging protocol. The PCD5008H's receiver control system, combined with the intrinsic properties of FLEX™, result in an average improvement of four to five times in battery life compared to previous (POCSAG) decoders.

"Philips Semiconductors is now in a unique position for producing high-speed paging ICs," said Francisco Ferrer, International Product Marketing Manager in Z¸rich. "We're the only manufacturer of FLEX™ ICs, with a long tradition in pagers. The know-how we've gained over the years, particularly in pager application support, coupled with our current position as a world leader for wireless telecom ICs, paves the way for our involvement in future systems, standards and products". Ferrer went on to say that Philips Semiconductors would be rapidly developing a whole new family of high-speed pager ICs "delivering state-of-the-art technology for new pagers and mobile phone/pager combinations."

Compared with previous paging systems, the low-voltage (1.8 to 3.6 V) PCD5008H uses a highly robust (FLEX™) code to offer very safe message transmission - effectively 12 times the error protection of POCSAG, resulting in improved sensitivity and a better call success rate.

Providing 8 long or 16 short permanent addresses and 16 fixed temporary addresses, the PCD5008H is compatible with a wide variety of synthesized receivers. Capable of any-phase decoding, it supports an 'over-the-air' updatable real-time-clock, and includes a low-battery indicator. The PCD5008H is housed in a low-profile QFP32 package. This cost-effective pager controller/decoder, manufactured in 0.5 µm CMOS technology, is backed by excellent application and design support, including a demoboard.

The FLEX™ protocol, Motorola's strategic platform for pagers, is intended as the foundation for future value-added paging services. With fully synchronous multi-speed signalling code optimized for throughput, efficiency and FLEXibility, it provides the fastest messaging speed available, quadrupling the capacity of other paging protocols and significantly improving messaging reliability. FLEX™ maintains data integrity by providing prudent error correction against multi-path fading errors (caused by multicasting).

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Philips Electronics NV, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the ninth largest semiconductor supplier and third largest discretes supplier in the world. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video and mobile technology position the company as leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by systems labs.

Organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and hosted in Asia-Pacific once every four years, Asia Telecom is the region's largest exhibition dedicated to the telecommunications industry. Over 32,000 visitors from over 90 countries are expected to attend the exhibition, where more than 400 companies are exhibiting. As a leading player in the global telecomminications market, Philips Semiconductors will be using Asia Telecom '97 to demonstrate its impressive array of telecommunications ICs and systems.