VHF marine processor packs audio processing

From CML Microcircuits comes the CMX885 marine VHF baseband processor designed to meet the global requirements of low-cost, highly-integrated marine VHF transceivers by offering complete audio processing with selectable audio processing order.

The chip is a complete marine world audio and signaling solution with in-band signaling capabilities including DSC, ATIS, DTMF, NWR WAT and SAME. The CMX885's embedded functionality also allows a very small, low-power, low-cost host microcontroller to be use as part of the overall marine VHF transceiver system.

Features include digital gain control, pre- and de-emphasis, filtering, soft limiting and voice scrambling options. Suitable for both portable and fixed mobile transceivers, the CMX885 uses dual Rx channel operation for DSC class D conformance.

The product also boasts a 1200bit/s Digital Selcall (DSC) modem with protocol support and an Automatic Transmitter Identification System (ATIS) modem, as well as NOAA weather radio decoding support. Additional Features: A full compliment of auxiliary ADCs, DACs and dual synthesized clocks is included in this low power marine VHF processor. A minimum of external components is required for the device that also offers flexible power saving modes.

The device operates between 3V and 3.6V and is available in 48-pin VQFN and LQFP packages. For designers wishing to evaluate the product, and reduce their design time, an evaluation kit (EV8850) is available from CML.

- Julien Happich
EE Times Europe

For application notes on processors click here.