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Video on FM Radio Frequency

VideOnRadio: What is it?

VideOnRadio: For Whom?

VideOnRadio: What is it?

The bottleneck of the wireless communication multi-media world is the infrastructures. High costs of the transceivers, first of all for the large number of them necessary to support good video quality for medium-/long-distance broadcasting on GHz frequency range, constitutes a tremendous limit.

So many useful applications for private/public institutions or companies become cost-ineffective or even simply inadmissible.

On the other hand, the dominant FM sub–carrier technology throughout the world is RDS (or RBDS in USA). This is a public protocol with standards existing both in Europe and in the United States. Low cost decoder chips are available from various sources and the signal is very robust. The problem is the data rate. A data rate of 1187.5 bps does not cut it fine in the modern wireless multi-media world.

TECHNITEIA SCC Protocol

A killer application for FM radio broadcasting, essential for any other application in the wireless multimedia domain, is the efficient transmission of still and moving images with/without audio signal .

For this application, TECHNITEIA developed the SCC (Subsidiary Communication Channel) protocol for one-way transmission (broadcasting: one-to-many) of video and audio, on an FM channel of 100 kHz, according to the more constraining European standards.

TECHNITEIA SCC System

The complete TECHNITEIA SCC System can be sketched as follows:

1. Wireless Main Multimedia Terminal (Sender)
2. SCC Encoder, encryption algorithm included.
3. FM Radio Transmitter (i.e. the transmission infrastructure)
4. Wireless Multimedia (Still/Mobile) Terminals with embedded SCC Decoder, decryption algorithm included (Receivers).

SCC Technical Features

The triple core of TECHNITEIA's SCC System is:

1. TECHINTEIA's (still/moving) image compressor. It is mainly composed by a classical lossy but feature-preserving discrete wavelet transform (DWT), integrated with TECHNITEIA's neural self-adaptive module, the Dynamic Perceptron Algorithm (DPA).
2. TECHNITEIA's TEL library, for the real-time encryption of the data to be transmitted. This feature is particularly important in FM multimedia transmissions, because of the diffusion of the radio technology.
3. TECHNITEIA's SCC transmission protocol. FM-SCC channels utilize the usual FM-SCA channels, also known as FM “sub–carrier” channels. They are the “sidebands” of the usual 100kHz of the European FM Radio Channels.

   

The SCC digital messaging signal incorporates advanced error correction schemes, to overcome the environmental distortions found in all wireless transmissions.

This combination of digital moving images compression/encryption, high transmission speed, and robust error correction yields a wireless system that is both reliable and economical.

SCC Performances

As a result, it is possible to obtain video transmission in QCIF format at roughly 8/12 fps using only 35 kHz of the 100 kHz available for a commercial FM radio station in Europe.

This allows transmitting video on FM radio together with the usual radio (also stereo) broadcasting.

On the contrary, if we use all the available 100 kHz, we obtain, after the charge related to the error protocol, a channel for compressed/encrypted video transmission of about 113 kbit, allowing high quality 640x480 (zoomed or not zoomed) video images.

The overall results with both alternatives are summarized as follows:

SCC Evolution

Of course, it could be possible, with a suitable antenna and energy source for each peripheral terminal, to reverse on a non-symultaneous basis the direction of the communication for a:

1. Point-to-point communication from/toward the main terminal.
2. Broadcasting from each terminal toward a part and/or the totality of the other terminals.

It is possible also an evolution of the system towards an interactive two-ways transmission by using TDMA or CDMA protocols on the GSM band, using GSM mobile-phones as transmitters/receivers.

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VideOnRadio: For Whom?

Potentially, any company and/or institution, owning and using an FM Radio Channel for audio transmissions/broadcasting, can transform it in a wireless multimedia audio-video channel.

SCC system makes sense especially:

• For commercial FM Radio stations, given that the actual trend in car production is to equip each of them with an LCD screen. Moreover, since it is actually very cheap to equip the usual FM radio receivers with an LCD screen, to broadcast music with the associated video-clip could be a significant new trend for young people. Finally, the SCC video channel could be also rented for advertising, public services, etc.
• For no-profit companies working in developing countries or generally within poor or degraded environments. The aim is to equip their educational, but also medical and charity institutions/activities with a cheap and robust multimedia infrastructure for distance learning, telemedicine, personal assistance, etc. also from/to a mobile seat (e.g., a van).
• For companies and/or public/private institutions using Radio frequencies for communicating with their fleets of taxis, trucks, ambulances, police cars, fire services, etc. For instance, the use of SCC System as an one-way, point-to-point audio/video channel — back from peripheral terminals to the central one —, could be a cheap and significant improvement of security for truck/taxi drivers. The SCC System, indeed, gives also automatically the localization of the transmitter (apart from the GPS).
• For companies and/or public/private institutions, but also families and simple individuals which must have a video-control of a very large territory (woods, fields, farms..., against fires, natural events, intrusions, etc.) for which usual wireless (or wired) infrastructures are too expensive.
• Finally, The SCC system in many cases can work also as a cheap security infrastructure for the back-up of more classical (wireless and wired) security systems...

TECHNITEIA is searching for partners  — overall in security, charity, and telecommunication fields — to develop common projects using its SCC system.