Microsemi commends power-over-HDBaseT (POH) standard ratification

ALISO VIEJO, USA: Microsemi Corp. has commended the ratification of Power Over HDBaseT (POH) as part of HDBaseT specification. This represents an important milestone for the HDBaseT Alliance, the cross-industry alliance formed to promote and standardize HDBaseT technology for whole-home distribution of uncompressed high-definition (HD) multimedia content, in promoting industry-wide adoption of the technology.

"The ratification of POH further validates HDBaseT as an emerging industry standard, and Microsemi is fully committed to the development of new Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) midspans and IC's supporting this new POH technology," said Paul Pickle, senior VP of Microsemi's Integrated Circuit Group. "Microsemi already has our PD69108 IC in full production. This IC product is compliant with Power Over HDBaseT 1.0, which allows switch and AV receiver makers to develop PSE's that can be extremely energy-efficient while delivering up to 100 watts (W). We look forward to working with the alliance to deliver additional products that leverage this innovative technology."

Microsemi heads the HDBaseT Alliance sub-committee developing HDBaseT power specifications that will broaden the applications for core PoE technology. HDBaseT's power-delivery technology provides the foundation for new opportunities to manage overall power consumption and efficiency. These capabilities are enabled by the underlying PoE technology that has become a critical element of the latest POH specification.

In addition to the PD69108, which can be used to implement Type 3 twin PSE's that deliver up to 95 W per port, Microsemi's PoE product portfolio also includes the PD95xx midspan family, which behaves as a Type 2 twin PSE supporting POH and with IEEE802.3at-2009, delivering up to 60W per port.

As one of the first companies to demonstrate how to leverage PoE-based technology to power various electronic devices throughout the home, Microsemi actively supports HDBaseT as means to distribute video over CAT5 cable, which enables the deployment of video-related devices such as TV's and monitors. POH is backwards compatible with IEEE802.3at-2009, and can be used not only with HDBaseT as the data format, but also with Ethernet for applications that require high power, but are not necessarily video-focused such as outdoor WiFi, outdoor WiMax, laptop computers and thin clients.

HDBaseT technology's digital connectivity standard enables five key elements known as 5Play to share the same low-cost CAT5e/6 network cabling infrastructure: uncompressed full HD video and audio, plus 100BaseT Ethernet, control signals—and power. HDBaseT's ability to deliver up to 100 W of power to network devices is a first for transport technology. As technology adoption grows industry-wide, HDBaseT's high performance standards and compatibility are being implemented across various companies' products—a vital step to ensure high performance standards and compatibility industry-wide.