Public Funding for Affarii Technologies Limited

The objective of this project is to undertake a live proof of concept trial of a new Digital Audio Broadcast architecture for comparative performance assessments and network interoperability testing. Affarii has developed a concept and core technology for a Digital Audio Broadcast (DAB) small site which addresses the challenges associated with increasing digital radio geographic and population coverage. Initial investigations have shown that Affarii’s small site approach has significant advantages over traditional network infrastructure: - 85% reduction in network power consumption for the same coverage area. - 75% reduction in overall site size for a typical installed service configuration. - 60% reduction in cost over an equivalent site using current network architecture. - Major improvement in local service support and cross network interference. - Flexible setup and management of services without physical reconfiguration. - Potential to reduce scheduled routine service from 3-6 month to 24 months. These advantages alter the economics of achieving >95% of population coverage, offering governments like the UK the potential to realize switch off traditional analog FM services. Additional benefits are low cost provision of local digital radio and ‘service on demand’ for special events - both areas of interest for the UK telecom regulator OFCOM. The development of small sites does have major challenges: the technology must exceed RF performance metrics of other leading wireless systems like 4G and even then small sites also do not fit the standard regulatory class of traditional high power DAB systems. The project will setup a live trial site that allows detailed measurement, comparison and interoperability of a small site within a live network environment for the purpose of supporting an application for regulatory approval for use in the UK and EU.