Eutelsat, STMicroelectronics Develop Low-Cost, Low-Power System-on-Chip

Eutelsat Communications, one of the world’s leading satellite operators, and STMicroelectronics have achieved a new milestone with a new-generation chip that will power Eutelsat’s SmartLNB interactive terminal.
 
ST’s low-power System-on-Chip (STiD337) represents a big step down in the overall cost of interactive satellite terminals. The STiD337’s first adoption is in Eutelsat’s SmartLNB, lowering cost, upgrading service and significantly reducing power consumption.
 
The SmartLNB enables a wide range of connected TV applications, providing a transparent bidirectional IP link compatible with existing services. Not limited to the TV and broadcast market, applications also cover the sector of connected objects (Machine-to-Machine, Internet of Things, SCADA, home-automation, Smart Buildings, etc.) with a cost-effective solution via satellite.
 
The STiD337 can achieve throughput of more than 100Mb/sec. The platform includes a dual ARM Cortex-A9 core with NEON co-processors and four ST231 DSP offload coprocessors. The new SoC will be available in secure and standard versions. The secure version includes pre-loaded encryption keys, serial numbers, safe-boot and many other features to increase the level of protection of data-delivering and gathering operations by the SmartLNB.
 
“We know from our customers that security is a major concern and we wanted to address that head on. Furthermore, with satellite terminals becoming more ubiquitous and employed in a greater range of use cases, we needed to pay even greater attention to power consumption,” said Antonio Arcidiacono, director of innovation at Eutelsat. “The design objectives we set have all been met and we’re aiming to roll out higher-performance, lower-cost, secure, and above all, lower-power consumption SmartLNB terminals based on ST’s new satellite SoC by the end of 2017.”