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The industry's smallest car radio antenna the, ATR4253 IC , designed for usage in car and navigation applications, was recently released by Atmel (News - Alert) Corporation, a leader in microcontroller and touch solutions.

The new device addresses frequencies up to 790 MHz while covering the digital multimedia broadcasting service in Korea, the digital video broadcasting in Europe and U.S. and also the integrated services digital broadcasting systems in Japan.

Atmel claims that the new active radio antenna provides maximum integration that includes automatic gain control, and a supply voltage regulator that affords protection against wild and high fluctuations in voltage. An antenna sensor in a 3x3 mm footprint is also included.

The compact size of the new antenna helps designers to develop smaller and high-performance antenna solutions that can be located in any area such as the car mirror, side windows, or the bumper. The robust IC with its antenna detection functionality is ideal for modern windows or glass antennas, and addresses other antenna types.

Like its predecessors Atmel ATR4251 and Atmel ATR4252, the ATR4253 enables clear reception without distortion. This is true even under difficult and fluctuating field strength. This particular aspect makes it very useful in the design of pre-amplifiers for car radios or for navigation applications that require FM-RDS information.

This feature rich device is equipped to deal with voltage fluctuations and enables excellent system performance, and an ambient temperature capability of up to 115 degrees centigrade, maintaining a high sensitivity level.  

Carsten Friedrich, marketing manager at Car Radio ICs at Atmel Corporation explaining the differences between the the new device and the previous ones, said that Atmel ATR4253 could support the application of a second FM antenna, obviating the need to have more than one antenna.

Samples of the car radio antenna IC ATR4253 are now available in small-outline QFN16 packages,and 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.

Atmel Corporation is a well known for its capacitive touch solutions, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property ) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions.

In a related news release, Atmel announced that its maXTouch controller has been designed into Samsung's (News - Alert) new 'Touch Control' smart touchscreens, supporting Samsung's premium full HD 3D LED 9000 series televisions.