Posted by Bangalore: Saankhya Labs, a 5G communication solutions provider has received Federal Communication Commission, (FCC), USA certification for its Broadcast Radio Head (BRH). The BRH complies with FCC Title 47CFR part 27 and part 15.
With this certification, Saankhya Labs has become the first Indian company with FCC-certified outdoor wireless communication equipment. Apart from BRH, Saankhya also has other FCC certified products in its portfolio.
Saankhya Labs’ BRH is an innovative concept for helping digital terrestrial broadcasters to increase their reach and market share. This is achieved by ‘Cellularizing’ the broadcast transmitters to provide ubiquitous coverage of broadcast signal for high-quality content reception in mobile, automotive, and other portable devices.
Traditional broadcast transmitters use very high-power transmitters fitted on tall towers (a.k.a. High Power High tower – HPHT) to give coverage to a large area ranging across 10s of miles. However, these networks needed a high-gain external antenna to get reliable reception indoors.
BRH works on the concept of very low power and low tower transmission (a.k.a. Low Power Low Tower – LPLT), similar to the power levels of a cellular radio transmitter. By adopting the coverage pattern of the cellular network, BRH’s can provide uniform coverage even indoors and in devices that do not have a high gain external antenna.
With large number of people watching video on their mobile devices, the BRH will enable broadcasters to effectively target these consumers. Broadcasters can also monetize the broadcast by showing hyper-local advertisements and provide newer data services over their broadcast network.
The BRH can also be deployed as part of Saankhya Labs’ 5G broadcast solutions. It is based on the convergence of broadcast and mobile broad mobile network. The operator can intelligently use the BRH network (that is co-located with mobile radios), to offload some of the high bandwidth-consuming data traffic, such as video.
“We are thrilled to bring often disparate mobile and broadcast ecosystems together. Our BRH offering significantly benefits both ecosystems with a cost-effective solution for high-bandwidth data as well as expanded market access opportunities” said Parag Naik, CEO – Saankhya Labs.
By enabling ubiquitous coverage and delivering better quality of service (QoS), BRH enables broadcasters to maximize their spectrum and deliver data to various applications such as OTT and Linear video content to mobile phones, Firmware upgrade over the air (FOTA), infotainment, maps and GIS data for connected automotive use cases, plus other IoT applications.
The BRH supports next-gen broadcast standards like ATSC 1.0, ATSC 3.0, DVB-T, DVB-T2, DVB-T2-lite and FeMBMS. It has configurable bandwidths supporting 5, 6 and 8 MHz band schemes, achieving data rates that can exceed 50 Mbps.
Saankhya has already delivered FCC certified BRHs to a large US-based broadcaster.