The End of Radio Mikes in the UHF Band?
The End of Radio Mikes in the UHF Band?
ECO Headquater, Copenhagen, Denmark
ECO Headquater, Copenhagen, Denmark
Piya Losdroláf with some of her ECO Colleagues
Piya Losdroláf with some of her ECO Colleagues

PROLOGUE


The mobile content market is growing exponentially and noteworthy changing. After having been granted late 2011 with the top of the UHF band for 4G telephony, operators still require more bandwidth. Beyond 5G whose standard is being finalized, manufacturers such as Qualcomm are already thinking about the 6G or even 7G. More content means more bandwidth!

Future mobile channels will pass between DTTV channels, in the UHF band, according to a transmission/reception system where a mobile device will be able to communicate with transmitters at different frequencies depending on location, without breaking the beam, like RDS radio. Qualcomm has made significant progress with this technology called Sliding Frequencies Universal Mobile Telecommunications (SFUMT).

DC Audiovisuel was invited to an informative meeting at the ECO (European Communications Office) in Copenhagen, Denmark, to meet Piya LOSDROLÁF in charge, with Alexander GULYAEV, of mobile frequencies issues. Our engineer Matthew was sent to this meeting.

REVELATION


The day she was going to be killed, Piya Losdroláf rose at half past five in the morning to wait for the boat on which Matthew arrived.

Piya Losdroláf, of Hungarian origin, around forty, wavy blonde hair, strict gray dress and academic eyeglasses, speaks perfect French with a light and charming accent, in addition to mastering Russian, English and Japanese.

After completing her brilliant studies at the MGTU (Moscow Baumann Technical State University), she obtained her PhD at Boston Massachusetts MIT, writing a thesis entitled Quantum wave celerity as a new cryptographic frequency modulation, from which military applications are already implemented. Then a consultant with Sony and Samsung, she worked for a time with Motorola and then Qualcomm, the world leader in mobile technologies. It is for this reason that she has beeen recruited in 2009 by the CEPT.

This shows how her technological expertise is important, as is her knowledge of telecom lobbies. She is a technocrat, but a competent technocrat. Perhaps too competent.

So here we are in this room on the 3rd floor of an office building as Europe only is used to design, located Nansensgade 19, 1366 København K, Danmark, not far from Peblinge Sø. Walls are covered with an extensive library of technical books in all languages and an impressive suite of frequency allocation charts of the 48 CEPT countries. It did not take our interlocutor more than three seconds, and a glimpse on the right wall, to give us the DTTV frequencies of Saint-Nom-la-Bretèche, France. Mrs. Losdroláf is the Scanzone of Europe!

Let us leave the floor to Piya Losdroláf: “By the end of 2015, there will be no more analog wireless transmission on UHF 470-870 MHz band, and this band will be fully dedicated to mobile and tv operators.

She continues: “The objective of the ECC is to move most of professional wireless communications, video as audio, on digital transmission 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, in order to optimize at best the channel segmentation. Two analog bands will however remain available, on one hand the VHF 174-223 MHz for wireless audio transmissions with 50 mW e.r.p. for professionals, on the other hand the VHF 169.4-169.6 MHz band for professional high power wireless audio transmissions, up to 500 mW e.r.p.

Since the arrival of DTTV, everyone understood that the quality of a wireless system is based on the reliability of its transmission, and well beyond the actual sound quality, which can be corrected by post-production. So it is time that manufacturers think about transmission systems more sophisticated such as digital transmission.

In this field, the market is likely to undergo profound turmoiln with significant changes in work habits, as only sound people are capable of.

Manufacturers overseas, starting with Zaxcom, are one step ahead. Lectrosonics has come a quarter of the way with its Digital Hybrid system where analog transmission supports a digital audio signal. Sennheiser and Shure, whose market is mainly live scene, face, like others, with the problem of delays in live transmission. As for Wisycom, Micron and Audio Limited, they do not communicate on the subject.

So the last shall be first, and the first last.” [Our engineer 20:16]

INDISCRETION


But when we talk about sound quality of the radio mikes from this British manufacturer, Mrs. Losdroláf imprudently tells us that her colleague Alexander Gulyaev recently received a CEO of a British company, who came to evoke the idea of a quite revolutionary transmission concept, both digital on 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, and multiplexed with a single analog VHF band channel.

Proud to see the fruits of her research openly highlighted outside the military field, she reveals us that the idea would be to switch from conventional antenna Diversity to frequency Triversity, with checksum control, by using wave celerity quantum changes, and thus connecting with her famous MIT thesis.

The goal is threefold, she says while simplifying:
- first, an analog VHF connection, with compressed audio quality, provides real time in case of live use;
- second, two 2.4 and 5 GHz digital frequencies combine together to optimize allowed power;
- finally the whole is multiplexed as a redundant signal, with quantum digital checksum, somewhat like a RAID 6 computer array.


She adds: “If this manufacturer has his way, no doubt he will have a real technological advance far above his competitors.

The challenges remains many, while both ergonomic, electronic and informatics, and require considerable expertise in radio frequency engineering. There are still two years to succeed.

For our part, the final challenge, at the friendly party which concluded this surprising day with Piya Losdroláf, was to withstand the famous pitabrød and smørrebrød, together with boiled red cabbage salad, without abuse of mjød, which would have prevented us to take back the boat and the plane in peace.

EPILOGUE


Back to Paris, we were saddened by the sudden death, on the same evening, of Mrs. Piya Losdroláf, overturned on her bicycle by a black American SUV that fled out. A criminal investigation is underway. As a precaution, we advised our engineer Matthew, himself a willful cyclist, to stay for a while in his country house known to him alone.

Hvil i fred Piya Losdroláf.
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