In that case someone had better tell my current client, the mobile broadband operator Vodafone Germany where I am part of the LTE rollout team, that they had better start designing an extra antenna into their handsets.
Wassim Chourbaji, Qualcomm's senior director for government affairs in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, has told PolicyTracker that the company will develop a Supplemental Downlink (SDL) chip that can use the 1452-1492 MHz band by 2015.
anyway not many of the UK DAB sets have L band, so band 3 (if more frequencies can be freed) will be best for small scale DAB mauxs
The DRM consortium is also pushing DRM+ as an alternative for small stations, but there are no sets.
Qualcomm (or whoever else for that matter) is free to design whatever it likes, in whichever band. However, if the operating block doesn't fall in a E-UTRAN harmonised band it won't get type approval and won't be incorporated in handsets.
By this time in the wireless broadband game, it's not even worth discussing non E-UTRAN (i.e. LTE) based systems.
..not many of the UK DAB sets have L band, so band 3 (if more frequencies can be freed) will be best for small scale DAB mauxs
L band, were it available and appropriate receivers in abundance, would be ideal for small scale muxes. L-band TX panel antennas, which are much smaller than their Band III bretheren, are easily fitted to cellular masts in a local area. Speak nicely to Arqiva and convince them you are a community enterprise and they might even let you mount them for cost.
The playout mux, built at the studio location on an open-source platform, can be distributed via a low-tech microwave 'star' network over 2-3 SFN hops covering, say, 10km radius. Total cost around £2-4k per location, depending on what deal you can get with the mast company.
This might seem a lot in comparison with an equivalent-range FM service but the difference is that the costs can be shared between a number of different community interest groups wanting to cover the same area with differently targeted services.
Back in the real world, you are right that small scale muxes will use Band III because it is easier (one central location rather than 5-6 for an L-band SFN) and there are an abundance of cheap, Band III-only sets.
we was quoted as a charity and community station in scotland 64kbps stream on dab all over central scotland on dab 2k a month.
This must be the regional UTV Switchdigital who lost a lot of stations due to Global and Bauer concentrating on localmux rollout?
A good discount,and no FM restrictions on coverage or ads, but still a lot of money for a community station?, are you going to take it up?
Cities like Manchester,Birmingham, Cardiff etc no longer have regional muxes and could maybe start small scale band 3 DAB tests for new community stations as local muxes and the FM band are full?
Now DAB is open source and the Brighton test showed it is possible to not have to use the expensive transmitter filters used on high power DAB, the cost will dramatically drop.
Just need Ofcom to free up some frequencies (11A is unused till D2 gets re-advertised) and some small stations and perhaps Universities willing to do some more tests?
I'd like to be that optimistic about it, but there are a few stumbling blocks yet:
(A) Brighton's surrounding hills make it ideal for this approach - 0.5W is line-of-sight coverage, which works moderately well if you're on a hill peering down at your city, as it does on FM. RadioReverb is one of the lowest powered FM stations in the UK. I'd want to see a successful test in somewhere more awkward like Bournemouth...
(B) Anyone doing this might have to build their own mast or find a tall object owned by a public-spirited organisation/individual; it would be against the interests of the large-scale transmission site owners to allow it.
(C) Spectrum... why would the government want to allocate spectrum to this, when there are higher value uses which would net the treasury £££? I suppose Eric Pickles used to have a show on community radio... (!)
(B) Anyone doing this might have to build their own mast or find a tall object owned by a public-spirited organisation/individual; it would be against the interests of the large-scale transmission site owners to allow it.
Or do as two of the Nottingham CR stations do - broadcast from a house (Well actually a TV repair shop) on the top of a big hill in the middle of the planned coverage area. Where there are a few organisations involved some may even have a few sites to choose from (e.g. on top of the tallest building on a uni campus).
(C) Spectrum... why would the government want to allocate spectrum to this, when there are higher value uses which would net the treasury £££? I suppose Eric Pickles used to have a show on community radio... (!)
The same reason why they want local TV - giving power to the people (see also Big Society, Free Schools etc) and removing it from central government. Most of the Band III is already used for the likes of taxi firms and other localised operators so it should be easy enough to plan around those.
Where there are a few organisations involved some may even have a few sites to choose from (e.g. on top of the tallest building on a uni campus).
That is a good point - universities are often a good source of sites.
It strikes me that the local stations in Cambridge would be ideally placed to take the testing of this idea to the next phase - there's Star Cambridge, Cam FM and Cambridge 105, and Cam FM have a site (Cambridge University Library's tower) which they indirectly own.
http://www.wohnort.org/dab/ukloc.html#Lough
Back in 2002 Loughborogh uni had a 50w test transmitter? But since then software and transmitter costs (with out expensive filters) have reduced.
I notice in a link from Southcity £500k has now been allocated over 2 years so hopefully see some more tests?
It would also be useful to have some DRM+ and DAB+ tests for comparison?
what bugs me is that companies won't advertise on a internet station that reaches not only there preferred area and all of Glasgow or whatever city they live in but the whole world. yet they will pay money for a dab advert that only reaches there preferred area and central Scotland or whatever multiplex there on. OK dab you don't need the internet installed but most mobile phones have a app store where you can download tune in app or whatever to listen to online stations while you walk anywhere in the house or street or even town.Also for example there sweet shop might be in Glasgow but for someone tuning in all the way down in Birmingham that is travelling to Glasgow for a holiday might hear the advert then decide to visit that sweet shop which is another advantage.
That's great news, I hope they enforce DAB+ only for the trials, that would ensure better use of the spectrum in the future by making sure new trials and services are using the latest technology.
Ofcom prefer trialists to use vanilla dab but if the appropriate codec patent licences are in place they can use dab+.
I thought mmb-tools had got around this requirement using FDK AAC for android but I must have misunderstood it.
Ofcom prefer trialists to use vanilla dab but if the appropriate codec patent licences are in place they can use dab+.
I thought mmb-tools had got around this requirement using FDK AAC for android but I must have misunderstood it.
Yes, they advise DAB over DAB+ for the purposes of the trial. And to be fair, that makes perfect sense. For a trial you want to be able to compare like for like to spot any differences.
After the trial, when they decide to start for real, they can always use DAB+ from then on.
Yes, they advise DAB over DAB+ for the purposes of the trial. And to be fair, that makes perfect sense. For a trial you want to be able to compare like for like to spot any differences.
After the trial, when they decide to start for real, they can always use DAB+ from then on.
But why would you want to? these small scale stations are for services which couldn't get on DAB via the local multiplex as they are too big, not for providing shed loads of capacity.
Here in Nottingham there are seven services I could see wanting to make use of local DAB (Community Stations Faza, Dawn, Kemet, Student stations URN, Fly, Norman, and local new music stations NGenious) - You could quite easily run those 7 stations at 160kbps and still have space over for a 64kbps mono / DAB+ service (e.g. an RSL / Ramadam opt-out).
In many towns and cities demand will be even less - if you have six or fewer stations you easily have enough room for them to all run at 192kbps too - with 32kbps left over for data. In somewhere like Preston that would be more than enough for the local Community Radio (Preston FM), ILR (The Bee), and student service (Frequency) with plenty of room left over for event services.
And if you want a more robust signal (operating like the local TV multiplexes with robustness over capacity) - you could operate four stations at 192kbps in PL1, or five at 160kbps PL1.
You're right, I don't see much reason for local stations to go DAB+. Sure, it does provide better audio quality and error correction than DAB. However, the downside is that you'd lose people with older receivers that support DAB but not DAB+. Local stations usually don't have the luxury to discard a proportion of listeners.
The only thing that is still an unknown is what the cost impact is going to be. On the large muxes it's not only the capacity that forces bitrates down, it's also cost as they pay per 16 kb/s. If a similar cost sharing system will be found on local muxes we might see the same downward pressure. Fortunately the cost will be fairly low and quite a few stations will have the mux to themselves.
You're right, I don't see much reason for local stations to go DAB+. Sure, it does provide better audio quality and error correction than DAB. However, the downside is that you'd lose people with older receivers that support DAB but not DAB+. Local stations usually don't have the luxury to discard a proportion of listeners.
The only thing that is still an unknown is what the cost impact is going to be. On the large muxes it's not only the capacity that forces bitrates down, it's also cost as they pay per 16 kb/s. If a similar cost sharing system will be found on local muxes we might see the same downward pressure. Fortunately the cost will be fairly low and quite a few stations will have the mux to themselves.
When the mini-muxes are formalised; I wonder if a community station held a licence directly, whether it'd be free to put both vanilla DAB and DAB+ streams on the multiplex (as long as the output was identical) without paying 2 fees to Ofcom?
Of course I'm sure it'll be regulated in that stations may only join the multiplex with Ofcom's permission, but 2 streams with identical content in 2 formats?
You're right, I don't see much reason for local stations to go DAB+. Sure, it does provide better audio quality and error correction than DAB. However, the downside is that you'd lose people with older receivers that support DAB but not DAB+. Local stations usually don't have the luxury to discard a proportion of listeners.
The only thing that is still an unknown is what the cost impact is going to be. On the large muxes it's not only the capacity that forces bitrates down, it's also cost as they pay per 16 kb/s. If a similar cost sharing system will be found on local muxes we might see the same downward pressure. Fortunately the cost will be fairly low and quite a few stations will have the mux to themselves.
Unless there is a DAB CoMux then it's more likely these multiplexes will be paid for directly by the broadcaster - therefore it will probably be a more 1/2 , 1/3, 1/4 split... Of course if some commercial quasi-national is allowed then it might become mucker
In many towns and cities demand will be even less - if you have six or fewer stations you easily have enough room for them to all run at 192kbps too - with 32kbps left over for data. In somewhere like Preston that would be more than enough for the local Community Radio (Preston FM), ILR (The Bee), and student service (Frequency) with plenty of room left over for event services.
And if you want a more robust signal (operating like the local TV multiplexes with robustness over capacity) - you could operate four stations at 192kbps in PL1, or five at 160kbps PL1.
According to David in post 16 of this thread, some radios can't decode above 128k in PL1. To run at 192k, they would need to use PL3. But I think it's unlikely they would. 128k is more than adequate for community-type services (the one on the Tayside mux has been running at 64k for years) and would guarantee reception on all radios using the most robust transmission mode. Moreover, it might not be politically expedient for selling DAB if people discover they can tune in to Tinpot Radio in glorious high-definition sound, while stations anyone actually wants to listen to, like Absolute Classic Rock, are in crappy 64k mono. The comparison wouldn't be kind -- even on one of those mono kitchen radios we're forever told are the only ones people are using to listen to DAB on these days.
Unless there is a DAB CoMux then it's more likely these multiplexes will be paid for directly by the broadcaster - therefore it will probably be a more 1/2 , 1/3, 1/4 split... Of course if some commercial quasi-national is allowed then it might become mucker
Yes, I'd thought of that too. I wonder how high the coverage would need to be to get any of the radio groups interested in subsidizing these mini-muxes by padding them out with (stereo..?) versions of, for example, the Absolute/Heart/Smooth/Capital spinoffs, or Planet Rock or something, on a quasi-national basis?
Moreover, it might not be politically expedient for selling DAB if people discover they can tune in to Tinpot Radio in glorious high-definition sound, while stations anyone actually wants to listen to, like Absolute Classic Rock, are in crappy 64k mono. The comparison wouldn't be kind -- even on one of those mono kitchen radios we're forever told are the only ones people are using to listen to DAB on these days.
What, you mean limit the quality of local stations because of a major flaw in the main digital radio platform in the UK? That's a pretty damning assessment of DAB, wouldn't you say?
Unless there is a DAB CoMux then it's more likely these multiplexes will be paid for directly by the broadcaster - therefore it will probably be a more 1/2 , 1/3, 1/4 split... Of course if some commercial quasi-national is allowed then it might become mucker
There are expressions of intent by UKRD and Celador presumably in running some of their smaller FM stations in small scale DAB, in cities like Portsmouth, Southampton and Bristol could mean Breeze and perhaps fire getting back on local DAB and allowing community and uni stations the chance to get on DAB?
The main other group with several small FM stations which could run minimuxes is UTV , but has put them up for sale and is why it is not on the published list
Expressions of Interest
Asian Paradise Radio (Bradford)
Asian Star Radio (Slough)
Associated Broadcast Consultants
Biggles FM (Central Bedfordshire)
Bolton FM (Bolton and Bury)
Cambridge 105 and Huntingdon Community Radio (Cambridge and Huntingdon)
Celador
Crystal FM (Penicuik, Midlothian)
Elastic FM Ltd (Clowne, Derbyshire)
Gateway 97.8 (Luton)
Hope FM (Bournemouth)
Juice 107.2 (Brighton)
KIK Radio (Wiltshire)
Hermitage FM (Coalville, Leicestershire)
London Greek Radio (North London)
Melksham Town Sound (Melksham, Wiltshire)
Radio North Angus (Tayside)
Radio Saltire (Tranent, East Lothian)
Radio Verulam (St Albans)
Rutland Radio (Rutland)
Seaside Radio (East Kent)
Severn FM (Gloucester)
Sheppey Matters (Isle of Sheppey)
Stoke Mandeville Hospital Radio (Stoke Mandeville)
Susy Radio (Reigate, Surrey)
UKRD
University Radio York (York)
The Vale Online (York)
Widefm Ltd (Bournemouth)
Maybe Hope, Widefm and Celedor's Breeze might put a joint bid in for Bournemouth?
Looks like Resonance is raising funds to also put in a bid for central London?
But there will only be 10 test licences initially issued?
Moreover, it might not be politically expedient for selling DAB if people discover they can tune in to Tinpot Radio in glorious high-definition sound, while stations anyone actually wants to listen to, like Absolute Classic Rock, are in crappy 64k mono. The comparison wouldn't be kind -- even on one of those mono kitchen radios we're forever told are the only ones people are using to listen to DAB on these days.
Bauer seem to getting main stations (like Kiss, Magic and Absolute) on stereo in London and 80k mono outside of London until the time to change to DAB+ stereo.
Presumably Bauer might consider some of it's national stations going on some cities small scale DAB muxes at 128k or 112k stereo if the space is there and the price is low?.(which will help the minimuxes funding?).
Bauer obliviously think Absolute Classic Rock is not so important for DAB so is only 64k mono unlike the other stations at 80k, but do not want to remove it from DAB? Maybe the plan is to eventually merge with Planetrock at some stage?
Yes, I'd thought of that too. I wonder how high the coverage would need to be to get any of the radio groups interested in subsidizing these mini-muxes by padding them out with (stereo..?) versions of, for example, the Absolute/Heart/Smooth/Capital spinoffs, or Planet Rock or something, on a quasi-national basis?
I was thinking of the more niche services like those on the Listen2Digital bid (e.g. Gaydio, British Muslim Radio etc) - if they got coverage of our biggest ten cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle etc) and any areas of specific interest to them (e.g. Brighton for Gaydio, Bradford for British Muslim Radio etc) then it may well be a very cost-effective way into DAB radio. Think also the likes of UCB inspiration, UCB Gospel etc.
Comments
http://www.policytracker.com/free-content/blogs/toby-youell/editorial-qualcomm-to-develop-sdl-chip-for-l-band anyway not many of the UK DAB sets have L band, so band 3 (if more frequencies can be freed) will be best for small scale DAB mauxs
The DRM consortium is also pushing DRM+ as an alternative for small stations, but there are no sets.
By this time in the wireless broadband game, it's not even worth discussing non E-UTRAN (i.e. LTE) based systems. L band, were it available and appropriate receivers in abundance, would be ideal for small scale muxes. L-band TX panel antennas, which are much smaller than their Band III bretheren, are easily fitted to cellular masts in a local area. Speak nicely to Arqiva and convince them you are a community enterprise and they might even let you mount them for cost.
The playout mux, built at the studio location on an open-source platform, can be distributed via a low-tech microwave 'star' network over 2-3 SFN hops covering, say, 10km radius. Total cost around £2-4k per location, depending on what deal you can get with the mast company.
This might seem a lot in comparison with an equivalent-range FM service but the difference is that the costs can be shared between a number of different community interest groups wanting to cover the same area with differently targeted services.
Back in the real world, you are right that small scale muxes will use Band III because it is easier (one central location rather than 5-6 for an L-band SFN) and there are an abundance of cheap, Band III-only sets.
Cheers, Qualcomm...
A good discount,and no FM restrictions on coverage or ads, but still a lot of money for a community station?, are you going to take it up?
Cities like Manchester,Birmingham, Cardiff etc no longer have regional muxes and could maybe start small scale band 3 DAB tests for new community stations as local muxes and the FM band are full?
(A) Brighton's surrounding hills make it ideal for this approach - 0.5W is line-of-sight coverage, which works moderately well if you're on a hill peering down at your city, as it does on FM. RadioReverb is one of the lowest powered FM stations in the UK. I'd want to see a successful test in somewhere more awkward like Bournemouth...
(B) Anyone doing this might have to build their own mast or find a tall object owned by a public-spirited organisation/individual; it would be against the interests of the large-scale transmission site owners to allow it.
(C) Spectrum... why would the government want to allocate spectrum to this, when there are higher value uses which would net the treasury £££? I suppose Eric Pickles used to have a show on community radio... (!)
The same reason why they want local TV - giving power to the people (see also Big Society, Free Schools etc) and removing it from central government. Most of the Band III is already used for the likes of taxi firms and other localised operators so it should be easy enough to plan around those.
http://www.commedia.org.uk/news/2013/12/small-low-cost-dab-transmission/
It strikes me that the local stations in Cambridge would be ideally placed to take the testing of this idea to the next phase - there's Star Cambridge, Cam FM and Cambridge 105, and Cam FM have a site (Cambridge University Library's tower) which they indirectly own.
Back in 2002 Loughborogh uni had a 50w test transmitter? But since then software and transmitter costs (with out expensive filters) have reduced.
I notice in a link from Southcity £500k has now been allocated over 2 years so hopefully see some more tests?
It would also be useful to have some DRM+ and DAB+ tests for comparison?
There will also be small scale DAB+ tests in Switzerland in 2014 with a list of participating community stations now published
http://www.wohnort.org/dab/switzerland.html#ZH
http://www.wohnort.org/dab/switzerland.html#GE
Looks like have enough stations to justify running at 100w so presumably have paid for the expensive filters?
http://www.opendigitalradio.org/index.php/Live_DAB%2B_test_transmission_in_Geneva_during_the_EBU_Radio_Week_2012_with_100W_ERP
http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2015/small-scale-dabradio/
That's great news, I hope they enforce DAB+ only for the trials, that would ensure better use of the spectrum in the future by making sure new trials and services are using the latest technology.
I thought mmb-tools had got around this requirement using FDK AAC for android but I must have misunderstood it.
After the trial, when they decide to start for real, they can always use DAB+ from then on.
But why would you want to? these small scale stations are for services which couldn't get on DAB via the local multiplex as they are too big, not for providing shed loads of capacity.
Here in Nottingham there are seven services I could see wanting to make use of local DAB (Community Stations Faza, Dawn, Kemet, Student stations URN, Fly, Norman, and local new music stations NGenious) - You could quite easily run those 7 stations at 160kbps and still have space over for a 64kbps mono / DAB+ service (e.g. an RSL / Ramadam opt-out).
In many towns and cities demand will be even less - if you have six or fewer stations you easily have enough room for them to all run at 192kbps too - with 32kbps left over for data. In somewhere like Preston that would be more than enough for the local Community Radio (Preston FM), ILR (The Bee), and student service (Frequency) with plenty of room left over for event services.
And if you want a more robust signal (operating like the local TV multiplexes with robustness over capacity) - you could operate four stations at 192kbps in PL1, or five at 160kbps PL1.
The only thing that is still an unknown is what the cost impact is going to be. On the large muxes it's not only the capacity that forces bitrates down, it's also cost as they pay per 16 kb/s. If a similar cost sharing system will be found on local muxes we might see the same downward pressure. Fortunately the cost will be fairly low and quite a few stations will have the mux to themselves.
When the mini-muxes are formalised; I wonder if a community station held a licence directly, whether it'd be free to put both vanilla DAB and DAB+ streams on the multiplex (as long as the output was identical) without paying 2 fees to Ofcom?
Of course I'm sure it'll be regulated in that stations may only join the multiplex with Ofcom's permission, but 2 streams with identical content in 2 formats?
Unless there is a DAB CoMux then it's more likely these multiplexes will be paid for directly by the broadcaster - therefore it will probably be a more 1/2 , 1/3, 1/4 split... Of course if some commercial quasi-national is allowed then it might become mucker
According to David in post 16 of this thread, some radios can't decode above 128k in PL1. To run at 192k, they would need to use PL3. But I think it's unlikely they would. 128k is more than adequate for community-type services (the one on the Tayside mux has been running at 64k for years) and would guarantee reception on all radios using the most robust transmission mode. Moreover, it might not be politically expedient for selling DAB if people discover they can tune in to Tinpot Radio in glorious high-definition sound, while stations anyone actually wants to listen to, like Absolute Classic Rock, are in crappy 64k mono. The comparison wouldn't be kind -- even on one of those mono kitchen radios we're forever told are the only ones people are using to listen to DAB on these days.
Yes, I'd thought of that too. I wonder how high the coverage would need to be to get any of the radio groups interested in subsidizing these mini-muxes by padding them out with (stereo..?) versions of, for example, the Absolute/Heart/Smooth/Capital spinoffs, or Planet Rock or something, on a quasi-national basis?
What, you mean limit the quality of local stations because of a major flaw in the main digital radio platform in the UK? That's a pretty damning assessment of DAB, wouldn't you say?
The main other group with several small FM stations which could run minimuxes is UTV , but has put them up for sale and is why it is not on the published list Maybe Hope, Widefm and Celedor's Breeze might put a joint bid in for Bournemouth?
Looks like Resonance is raising funds to also put in a bid for central London?
But there will only be 10 test licences initially issued?
Bauer seem to getting main stations (like Kiss, Magic and Absolute) on stereo in London and 80k mono outside of London until the time to change to DAB+ stereo.
Presumably Bauer might consider some of it's national stations going on some cities small scale DAB muxes at 128k or 112k stereo if the space is there and the price is low?.(which will help the minimuxes funding?).
Bauer obliviously think Absolute Classic Rock is not so important for DAB so is only 64k mono unlike the other stations at 80k, but do not want to remove it from DAB? Maybe the plan is to eventually merge with Planetrock at some stage?
I was thinking of the more niche services like those on the Listen2Digital bid (e.g. Gaydio, British Muslim Radio etc) - if they got coverage of our biggest ten cities (London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle etc) and any areas of specific interest to them (e.g. Brighton for Gaydio, Bradford for British Muslim Radio etc) then it may well be a very cost-effective way into DAB radio. Think also the likes of UCB inspiration, UCB Gospel etc.