WorldDAB member focus - Frontier Smart Technologies

09.02.2021 - - Frontier Smart Technologies WorldDAB Member - United Kingdom

by Rebecca Keene, Stakeholder Relations Manager, WorldDAB

Q&A with with Prem Rajalingham, Managing Director, Frontier Smart Technologies

What markets does your company support and what solutions do you provide?

We are a fabless chip company providing turnkey solutions for DAB/DAB+ radios and SmartRadio. Powering over 50 million devices worldwide since 2002, we provide a range of radio chips and modules – from turnkey entry-level solutions to sophisticated, highly configurable options – to leading consumer electronics brands. Our chips and modules are typically designed into home audio and aftermarket automotive products such as tabletop radios, clock radios, boomboxes, microsystems, CD Hi-Fi, soundbars, AV receivers, streamers, 1din / 2din car audio systems, in-car DAB adapters, and others.

Can you tell us about your most recent projects?

We recently launched a new Pro range of chips and modules with enhanced memory, allowing audio brands to create the most feature-rich and advanced digital radios in the market.

Our new Pro product range has been designed to allow a wide range of premium features to be added to digital radio. The Pro range includes a new chip, module, and software development kit.

Our new Kino 4-Pro chip is now in production, which includes a larger memory footprint to allow features to be added to a product without compromising on performance.

The new Siena-Pro module, based on the new Kino 4-Pro chip, is also now in production.

The software for the Pro product range (DAB 7 SDK), supports the following advanced features:

Premium colour UI – Create a premium user experience with beautiful high contrast colour interface. Fully customisable. Integrated support for 2.4 - 3.5 inch colour TFT, OLED, and LCDs.
Multiple slideshow format – Delight users with support for broadcaster’s slideshows in both PNG and JPG format.
Store demo mode – Design eye capturing store demo with custom slideshow, which can be easily enabled/disabled. Easy way to inform users on key features of the product.
Multiple clock face - Supply up to four high-quality clock faces, that can be configured by the user.
Multiple theme selection – Empower users with up to six themes, allowing the user to configure the look and feel of the radio.
Night mode – Create great bedside products with dimmable backlights and soft colour scheme to allow users to sleep close to the radio. In addition to fully configurable clocks, alarms, and timers.
ActiveScan technology – Improve user experience by ensuring that radio station pre-sets and station list is always up to date. ActiveScan technology continuously monitors airwaves and updates the station list. This feature will also be made available on Siena (standard).

Besides the features above, we are continuing to develop other new and innovative features which will be available on the Pro range in the future.

What do your customers value most from your solutions?

The following are the key reasons customers use our solutions, with the technology powering over 75% of the home DAB+ products:

Better performance, field-tested

DAB performance testing in a lab is not the same as field performance
New markets (eg France) will initially have unpredictable broadcast conditions. Important to field test products in target market thoroughly.
Frontier helps test products in our customer's target market, with its European support teams.
Field-tested products = low field returns!

Feature-rich

Frontier solutions offer more features, regardless of entry-level or premium products
Color UI, Bluetooth integration, proprietary “frequency avoidance” technology for higher sensitivity, multi-language, CD support.

End to end service

For manufacturers: reference designs, design review, manufacturing support
For audio brands: field testing, product ideas, product placement, post-sales field support
For retailers: product training, field testing, product recommendations

What advice would you give someone considering deploying DAB?

It is important to focus on performance and quality of receivers sold, as this could ‘make’ or ‘break’ a market. DAB+ is a relatively new technology which is being rolled out in many markets. We need to ensure consumers have positive experience when using DAB+ receivers, such that it supports further rollout and adoption of digital radios.