In Broadcast - August 2014 - 68

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

WWW.INBROADCAST.COM | ISSUE 34 - AUGUST 2014

N E W S

InFORM

Achieving Robust Wireless Delivery
There is a lot of focus placed on the sluggish "last mile" of internet delivery of content, but getting the
content distributed wirelessly is equally important to the end-user says AirTies' Bulent Celebi...

I N T E R N A T I O N A L

N E W S

By
Staff Writer

he main viewing screen is
the TV in the lounge, but with
more and more internet enabled
mobile devices, the consumption
of content is dependent on reliable
and robust wireless.
Founded in 2004, AirTies
Wireless Networks is a leading
supplier of advanced technology to
the broadcast and the broadband
industry, its stated aim is to
provide high performance WLAN
connectivity.
The company designs and
develops its own software and
hardware, wirelessly streaming
HD video to multiple rooms and
multiple screens. AirTies product
portfolio includes broadband
Internet devices and Internet-based
television set top boxes (STBs).
The goal is to enable the
seamless wireless integration of
Wi-Fi enabled devices at the touch
of a button, as well as ensuring full
wireless coverage in homes.

Signal Deployments
"Wi-Fi technology has gone from
11g to 11n to 11ac and everybody
keeps claiming that the technology
is going to be good enough for high
quality pixilation-free streaming
of video throughout the house,"
says Executive Chairman and Cofounder of AirTies, Bulent Celebi.
"To date there are literally three
real deployments - Swisscom,
AT&T and DirecTV in the US.
What has happened is that the
technology hasn't really been good
enough or robust enough to really
deliver on the promise."
Bulent cites a real-world test in
a multi-room two-storey ﬂat. In the
same room with the best available
Wi-Fi - 11ac 3x3 technology - it
is possible to get an 800Mbit/s
connection. One room away
500Mbit/s. One ﬂ oor away this
drops to 98Mbit/s.
However, in the same room
with two of these devices and an
iPad (capable of 11n) the total
capacity drops from 300Mbits/s
to 290Mbits/s. Take one of the
3x3 11ac devices upstairs and the
capacity drops to 68Mbit/s.
"A tremendous pull-down of total
capacity. When you are streaming
from a PVR to a tablet or to a

second TV the video is transmitted
over the air twice which pulls down
the total capacity by another 40%.
"When you add all these factors
together, the promise and the
vision that we are going to have all
these wonderful connected devices
able to record content in one place
and stream it to another just is not
able to materialise.
"These are the problems that
AirTies solve. What we do is
implement a Mesh network, so
each of the client devices turns
into a smart access point router.
They talk between each other and
route the packets over the best
path available. Since they are
physically closer to each other
their interlink connection speeds
are much greater than what you
would normally have seen - so you
get something similar to a bunch
of the same in-room performances.
"Actual measurements indicate
a factor ten improvement in
performance improvements.
The Swisscom deployment sees
an integrated, high-speed 600 +
300 Mbps dual-band concurrent
video streamer, the WLAN
Magic Box, utilising 4x4 MIMO
and 802.11n to deliver wireless
performance for real-time video
distribution and data transmission.
Equipped with a DLNA Media
server, the WLAN Magic Box
accommodates legacy wireless
devices at 300 Mbps on 2.4GHz
while streaming high-speed video
at 600 Mbps on 5GHz.
Swisscom selected the Air4641
Video Bridge for its AirTies
Mesh software.
AirTies is also providing British
Sky Broadcasting with wireless
connectors that allow Sky
customers to wirelessly access
Sky's TV on demand service.

Executive Chairman and Co-founder
of AirTies Wireless Technology
Bulent Celebi

These will be used to upgrade
their installed base of Sky+ HD
set top boxes so that they connect
wirelessly to the internet and enable
delivery of on demand services to
their existing subscriber base.
"So on demand services picking
up, the number of downloads up
by 500%, on demand movies up,
we are basically the underlying
technology that allows this to
happen," adds Celebi.

Wireless Frequency
"Moving to 5Ghz makes the
per formance significantly
better. The reason for that is
at 2.4Ghz there are only three
non-overlapping channels
and so if you are in a city type
environment or your neighbours
are relatively close the probability
of getting interference is very high,
which again impacts the video
performance. Also there are a lot
of low performing legacy devices
at 2.4Ghz," says Celebi.

"When you go to 5Ghz you get
22 channels and most of the
devices are relatively new so their
performance is better."
He said that AirTies STBs
incorporate integrated 11ac
wireless connectivity and AirTies
Mesh technology that increases
wireless coverage and performance
signiﬁcantly over conventional WiFi implementations (See Fig.1.)
"The 11ac protocol definitely
improves the physical distance
with things like beam forming
technology. Not all the chips
have it - so you have to use the
more expensive chipsets to take
advantage of that technology.
We've been using the adaptive
bitrate protocols which give the
best performance for the current
internet connection."
Celebi claims that "satellite
quality" television is possible
over the unmanaged internet:
"We have done an end-to-end
trial with Octoshape and Envivio
and our equipment to deliver
satellite quality video over the
unmanaged internet.
This technology demonstration
of HEVC adaptive bitrate video,
delivered over the public Internet
to consumer STBs was made at
TV Connect 2014.
The combined solution was hailed
as a "significant advancement"
in economically deployable
broadband IPTV/OTT services.
Celebi said that the system
would be in production towards
the end of this year.
"We are going to see more and
more of this type of thing. On
demand is going to become more
and more of the picture of the total
TV environment and the technology
is here on a very wide scale now".

Fig. 1. AirTies Mesh wireless technology enables a point-to-point topology to improve network performance

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