Saankhya Labs shows prowess to deploy 5G broadcast tech at MWC’19

Saankhya Labs, the Bangalore-based wireless communication system and transformative technology solutions provider, has successfully demonstrated their new solutions for next-generation communication technologies of 5G Broadcast and Direct to Mobile TV(DTM).

Saankhya Labs showed a technology demonstration of their patented 5G Broadcast solution at the recently concluded Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2019 in Barcelona, Spain from 25^th to 28^th February. This is claimed to be the first time in the world that a 5G Broadcast solution using the convergence of Broadband and Broadcast technology has been demonstrated anywhere in the world.

5G Broadcast is the next generation communication technology that is based on the convergence of Broadcast & Broadband networks. This solution enables telecom service providers to offload video traffic from their mobile network onto the 'cellularized' broadcast network. This will help decongest mobile spectrum use by offloading the video traffic that accounts for maximum data use. This will improve usage of mobile spectrum and increase the user experience by freeing bandwidth which will help reduce call drops, increase data speeds etc.

Video traffic is the fastest growing traffic on mobile networks. World over, about 60% of mobile data usage is of video content, and this is expected to increase to over 75% by 2022. The Indian mobile market is expected to grow to more than 850 million users. 5G broadcast will help unchoke the mobile networks from this huge video traffic.

This solution not only helps the Mobile Operators to free up bandwidth and provide a superior user experience but also will help broadcasters to monetize their broadcast spectrum by reaching millions of additional mobile subscribers.

5G Broadcast has a wide variety of applications such as Multimedia and Entertainment including HD TV to Mobile devices, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality (VR and AR) Services. It can be a very effective solution for Emergency Broadcast Services, Internet of Things, Various Automotive applications such as Firmware Upgrade Over the Air (FOTA), broadcast of mapping and GIS data for Driverless Vehicles, Automotive Infotainment etc.

Apart from 5G Broadcast, Saankhya's another solution called Direct to Mobile TV (DTM), will allow mobile devices to receive terrestrial Digital TV. As more and more people are watching entertainment content on portable devices, DTM gives the option to watch Free to Air Linear TV such as Live sports, news etc on their mobile devices without buffering and without a data network.

Both the technology solutions i.e. 5G Broadcast and Direct to Mobile TV are powered by Saankhya's indigenous Pruthvi-3 Chipsets based on award-winning and patented SDR architecture. Pruthvi-3 is a fully programmable multi-standard chipset that supports next-generation communication standards. Pruthvi-3 chipset was launched last year in December by Hon'ble Minister of State for Communications, Shri. Manoj Sinha.

Commenting on the launch, Parag Naik, co-Founder and CEO, Saankhya Labs, said, "The majority of the content on mobile devices is in the form of videos. This exponential rise in video consumption poses a great challenge to network operators who are looking at efficient video delivery solutions. The offload of videos from broadband to broadcast under the 5G broadcast aims to resolve this issue. We at Saankhya Labs are working on several such next-generation technology developments including our futuristic Cognitive RAN solution that can help build a more open and better mobile device ecosystem beyond 5G.”