SAMBA
System for Advanced interactive digital television and Mobile services in BrAzil
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Description of the consortium
CREATE-NET (Center for REsearch And Telecommunication Experimentation for NETworked communities) is a non-profit
international organization with core competences in advanced communication technologies, with special emphasis in
broadband, pervasive, wireless, networked multimedia and security technologies. CREATE-NET manages top level
collaboration and strategic alliances for integrating global key partners in research and development actions.
CREATE-NET fosters technology transfer and internationalization through various activities related to completing the
lifecycle of research and development, by bringing research results into business and socially-oriented services
worldwide. Through an advanced testbed infrastructure, CREATE-NET research activities are the basic driver for the
development of emerging sophisticated applications and services and their testing in a realistic global scale o
perational environment.
APTEL, is a Brazilian utilities association in charge of develop and improve its associates’ telecommunication systems.
Having as participant the main electric and gas distribution and transmission companies in Brazil,
APTEL has also as associated partners all the research and development centers involved with PLC in the country.
In order to accomplish its mission, APTEL has been in touch with PLC technology since 1998, when it promoted the first
PLC international symposium in Brazil. Since then, APTEL has repeated yearly the event and in the last year
has launched the FORUM APTEL PLC BRASIL, the first and the only dedicated to this technology in our country.
With cooperation and alliance commitments firmed with UPLC Forum (USA) and PLC Forum (Europe), the Brazilian Forum
has born in touch with the vanguard of the technology deployment and application fields.
Since 1998, APTEL has been developed many trials of PLC technology in association with its partner companies.
Covering many field situations ranging from urban to rural areas, APTEL has gathering experience and knowledge
enough to believe that PLC has a fundamental role to be played in the Latin America efforts to fulfill the digital divide.
APTEL has deployed recently, in association with the Brazilian government, a field trial gathering a PLC network with a
satellite link to serve a rural community placed in a poor region of the country. Named as Barreirinha Project, the trial
provided in its first phase internet access to schools, health agencies and local handcraft association.
In the second phase, programmed to begin soon, the service will cover VoIP and TV signal transmission besides
those provided in the past phase.
APTEL has supported the Brazilian Government in planning the introduction of PLC technology in the telecommunication
market in Brazil. As a result of these efforts we can count the recent decision of ANATEL, the Brazilian Telecommunication
Agency, starting the process to certificate PLC products in the country.
Axel Technologies Oy is a high technology company focusing on DVB-technologies (Digital Video Broadcasting),
Datacasting (IPDC) solutions and embedded systems. Axel Technologies offers design services, platform products and
consultant services for device manufacturers, broadcasters, and media industries.
Axel Technologies is one of the most experienced companies utilizing Linux - DVB combination.
Axel Technologies has years of experience on research and implementation of DVB services with Linux on various
hardware platforms. Along with our clients and partners Axel has created innovative digital TV solutions since
year 2000. During these years, Axel has been a close partner for several device manufacturers, broadcasters,
and service providers focusing on DVB related areas.
TIS is the BUSINESS INNOVATION CENTRE of the Government of South Tyrol, Italy. The mission of TIS includes the
promotion of innovative actions within the Region. It acts as a regional hub for the incubation of innovative
enterprises, consults existing companies on innovation and activities towards the adoption of new technologies.
TIS is in all senses a PUBLIC EQUIVALENT BODY, as certified by previous EU projects. TIS DIGILAB, is a
relatively new division within the structure of the TIS. It acts as a competence centre for digital communications
for the Government’s Department for Innovation, Research, Development. Currently TIS DIGILAB is mainly
focusing on the introduction to t-government services for the public administration. For this goal TIS
DIGILAB is operating a full fledged DVB-T and DVB-H platform and will act as a regional service centre for
public and private companies. TIS DIGILAB is developing advanced MHP applications for t-government, t-learning,
t-banking. TIS DIGILAB has also partnered with major Telco operators in order to test optimal return channel
configurations in fixed and mobile environments
PUSP is a leading Engineering School in Brazil and Latin America. It is strongly focused on research and on technology
transfer. The participation in European funded research projects under FP6 and the existing close relationship with
the industry will lead to an important improvement in the flow of information between diverse research communities in
Latin America and between academia and wide sectors of industry, business and society in general and will bridge Latin
America and European scientific communities, as well.
The Department of Computing Engineering and Digital Systems (PCS) (www.pcs.poli.usp.br) is one of the 15 engineering
departments of the Escola Politécnica (www.poli.usp.br) the engineering school of the Universidade de São Paulo
(www.usp.br) and provides undergraduate and graduate level teaching and undertakes technological research in the
fields of Digital Electronics and Computer Engineering.
The fast growth and development of these areas is reflected in the ongoing updating of the Department's research
areas and in the graduate and undergraduate courses. Constant interchange with national and international companies
and other institutions of higher education provides important inputs to this continuous redirection process.
The Department and PUSP – Universidade de São Paulo Support Foundation work together to carry out activities
associated with technological development.
The Department offers graduate courses awarding Masters and Doctorates degrees. The main aims of graduate studies in the
Department are: the training of professors and researchers; the training of highly qualified professionals; the
development of scientific and technological research. Between 2000 and 2004, more than 65 Masters and 55 Doctorates
degrees were awarded. PCS members and research groups have been consultants and conduct projects for a large number of
governmental organizations and private companies, such as: METRO (Sao Paulo Subway Company), Siemens, NEC,
TELESP (Sao Paulo Telephone Company), ERICSSON, BRADESCO (Private Bank), CTA (National Aeronautics Centre),
Philips do Brasil, Laboratório Philips da Amazônia, etc. Working very closely with PCS,
the Innovation and Institutional Partnership Office – NUDI of the Escola Politécnica helps the
Department in the interaction with the industries.
Founded in Munich in 1949 as a non-profit registered association, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der
angewandten Forschung e.V. (FHG/FOCUS) is a link between science and industry that is between the research and the
application of its results. The Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS) advances enabling
technologies for the information society based on its vision of a user-centric ubiquitous computing and communication
environment: the multi-dimensional space of the user's profile including interests, habits, skills, physical and
psychological conditions, location, time, and environmental properties at a given location and time guide the information
selection, its presentation, and the possible interactions between the user and his environment. To achieve this FOKUS
develops a seamless communication infrastructure upon which globally distributed, environment-aware application components
can interact according to requested service quality levels. FOKUS adds a unique flavour as it combines the expertise in
the relevant fields to provide the needed core technologies. Developments are pursued up to the pre-product level.
Main Research Topics are User-centric Communication Environments and Services; Technologies for 3G, 4G Mobile Systems;
Intelligent Home-Network-Environments; Enabling Open Service Markets; Systematical Testing of Distributed Systems;
Internet Next Generation.
In SAMBA, Fraunhofer FOKUS is represented through its Competence Center Smart Environments (SE).
One of the core objectives of SE is user-centric, seamless provision of interactive audio-visual services spanning
different environments such as broadcast, internet, home networking and mobile environments including related
content management.
The Laboratory of Usability and Quality of Software (LUQS) is a part of University of Fortaleza (UNIFOR) structure,
in Brazil, and it is coordinated by Elizabeth Sucupira Furtado. She researches focus on the areas of Software Engineering
and Human-Computer Interaction, more specifically on User Interface design and evaluation, as well as on evaluating
usability maturity models and processes for organizations. LUQS has its own physical structure, which allows us to develop
information systems and perform usability tests, each one in its specific and well equipped environment.
In the design of UIs, our lab group aims at providing productivity for professionals to develop more usable UIs
through the application of agile processes, in which some activities (requirements, analysis, implementation and test)
are integrated with some practical usability artifacts and activities.
In the tests, our lab group faces with some usability errors and comments, which are addressed in the product built.
After the errors are fixed, we describe our lessons learned by defining some guidelines. The result of these works is
the refinement of a document associating possible solutions (as usability patterns) for each guideline. We believe
this document contributes to the development of interactive systems that are easy for users to learn and use, and to
help testers in performing their inspections methods. We believe the planning usability for a product can be defined,
documented and verified.
Besides of developing and evaluating information systems, our lab group supports the usability professionals and the
organization professionals to prepare an organization to apply Usability Practices (UP) in its software development
process. It includes the application of techniques in order to perform some steps, which are basically: Conduct interviews
(to know the organization needs), Give training (to capacitate professionals of software development teams to apply the
UPs and to monitoring them through the usability ROI), Collaborative Design (to make the validation of practices being
applied in an organization) and, Present Findings (to present the strengths and weaknesses of the UPs application in the
current engineering processes of the organization studied).
TV Mirante network of TV Globo affiliated stations consists of five stations in the State of Maranhão, namely at the
Capital City of São Luis and four others at Açailandia, Imperatriz, Santa Inês and Codó, being all five market leaders in
their respective geographic areas. TV Mirante leadership is the result of heavy investment in technology and human
resources to guarantee the best reception possible, offering top quality local and regional information and entertainment
to the community.
TV Mirante São Luís the head station in our network started operations on march 15, 1987 and alone reaches 181
municipalities, 891.000 domiciles and potencially 3.7 million viewers. As market leaders we have the best percent market
share in our state
