SiTel offers high-quality Text To Speech on DECT phones

Embedded natural-sound Text To Speech software "speaks" incoming caller ID information and other text date

‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, February 17, 2009 - SiTel Semiconductor today announced the availability of a powerful natural-sound Text To Speech software engine for its latest DECT chipsets. The engine runs on SiTel's SC14450 DECT baseband processor and SC1448x family of single-chip DECT / CAT-iq solutions, using only 1.2 Mbytes of external serial Flash memory and minimal processor overhead. As the external memory can also be used for storing answer-machine messages, manufacturers can incorporate Text To Speech into their designs with no additional hardware costs.

Developed by Philips Applied Technologies, this high-quality Text To Speech engine is optimized for interpreting names but can convert any text data into spoken words. It uses an 8 kHz audio bandwidth to deliver a very clear and natural-sounding voice. Customers can choose between a number of languages including U.S. English and Spanish.

"Our engineers, together with engineers from SiTel, succeeded in porting our high-quality, natural-sound Text To Speech engine onto SiTel's DECT chipsets," said Wim van der Ligt, Marketing Manager at Philips Applied Technologies. "We are pleased that these advanced algorithms, which were developed for high-quality applications, are now running on the powerful embedded processor in SiTel's DECT chipsets."

"Text To Speech is an exciting new application that improves accessibility for phone users, and offers manufacturers a great way to differentiate their products in this busy marketplace," said René Kohlmann, Chief Technology Officer at SiTel. "We're delighted that, working with Philips Applied Technology, we were able to bring high-quality Text To Speech functionality to the DECT market."

A typical application for the engine would be to enable DECT or CAT-iq handsets to speak the caller identification information they receive. As CAT-iq always transmits the caller's name, not just their number, receivers would be able to hear who is calling even before picking up the phone.

About the SC14450

The SC14450 features a 16-bit CompactRISC™ processor plus two user-programmable Gen2DSPs. It delivers 240 MIPS of processing power, enough to run applications including MP3, full-duplex wideband audio for hands-free use, TCP/IP, high-end graphics displays and more. In addition, the SC14450 supports a variety of external memories, and features an integrated class D amplifier, power and battery management options, a white LED driver and a wide variety of peripheral interfaces including master / slave PCM, UART, SPI, dual-access bus and USB client.

About the SC1448x family

The SC14480 is the world's first monolithic integrated DECT/DCT solution in standard CMOS. Its high-performance Gen2DSP core provides enough processing power to run telephone answering machine voice compression, advanced ring-tones and support the superior voice quality of the CAT-iq standard. The SC14480 can operate directly from 2 battery cells and includes an integrated white LED driver to support higher voltages, reducing external component costs. Li-Ion battery support also makes the chip ideal for headset applications. The SC14481 also features an integrated antenna power amplifier.

The SC14480 and SC14481 are part of a family of single-chip product. They come with Flash memory, making them ideal for product development product development, production ramp-up or in applications requiring regular software upgrades. Various ROM / RAM variants are also available and as well as a version with an LCD driver for the low-end market.