JamiroBroadcast was commissioned to conduct a countrywide signal mapping in 102 towns in Kenya by measuring, analyzing, and diagnosing the quality of FM and TV RF signal received in these towns by The Standard Group Plc, a multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services with 4 Television Channels and 4 FM Stations. The goal for this was to:
- To evaluate that the TV Signal Distributors transmit the RF Signal in compliance with the Service Level Agreements in terms of Bit Rate allocated for TV programs.
- Benchmarking the competitors and evaluating the quality of their TV Signals by collecting info. and evidence for addressing the conversation with the regulators, Signal Distributors, and other broadcasting stakeholders.
- FM Transmission planning and expansion per the demographics.
The task involved conducting a driving campaign with a truck, equipped with an Antenna mounted 3 meters above the ground, which would typically translate to a TV viewer living in a single storey house, and SAM CV-1000 RF Spectrum Analyzer.
SAM-CV 1000 collected the RF measurements from one or more RF input as well as the GPS data for the current position and then the engineer was able to get the coverage for several DVB-T/-T2 channels or several DVB-T2 PLPs with just one single drive campaign. The entire band scan for all licensed TV Carriers (SIGNET, PANG, ADNL, and BAMBA) including the FM spectrum (88-108) Mhz for all active FM channels in a particular town was the identification and measurement.
Reporting and Presentation
The technical data captured was analyzed and presented in Pie Charts, Bar Graphs, Maps, and Spreadsheets. This aided the visualization to Non-technical consumers whilst providing an in-depth, simplified visualization for all the FM Stations and DVB-T2 carriers in the country.
In addition to the captured technical data from the field, we were able to integrate the population data from the last census report conducted in 2019, which would greatly help media owners with investment decisions in signal distribution across the country while focusing on the demographics distribution. To maintain the accuracy and precision of the data captured, Jamiro Broadcast developed an Algorithm that automatically translates the raw data from SAM CV-1000 into visual maps hosted in the cloud with public access to anyone who would like to determine the RF signal behavior across the country for FM and TV channels. This was achieved by planting RF probes in the most problematic remote regions in the country, guided by the population data to improve the viewer and listener experience in these towns.
“With real-time data reporting and analysis, the media owner would pro-actively act and ensure transmission problems are handled more effectively and efficiently before the viewer and the listener reports these issues”, Says Benson Nyaga, Technical Director-JamiroBroadcast. The solution is packaged and currently available in Kenya.
This would later scale to other countries in Africa for a comprehensive RF signal analysis for both TV and Radio with the focus being signal operators, media owners, advertising agencies, and any other party interested in determining radio and tv RF coverage distribution. In addition to the FM and DVB-T2 RF signal mapping, JamiroBroadcast has invested in our own Telemetry and monitoring solution, which would be launched in the 3rdQuarter, 2021.
This solution is intended to provide a turnkey telemetry solution to telecommunication industries with Machinery and equipment on remote sites including Telco operators, Mobile Command Centres, Security, and Surveillance just to name a few…The solution features an IoT M2M module which interfaces with the Device Under Test( DUT) using HTTP POST, Modbus TCP, and MQQT, and sends the data to a cloud which then provides a mobile application on iOS and Android for telemetry and monitoring.
