Mobile TV chip manufacturer Siano has joined forces with Rosum Corporation to move mobile TV up the value chain by launching technology to support localised advertising within video streams.

The new ALLOY chip will see use in Femtocells, trackers and mobile TV devices and is claimed in addition to extend location-based services beyond the limitations of traditional GPS. It utilises broadcast TV signals to provide precise frequency, timing and location information.

The two companies that use of their chip opens up a multitude of new commercial opportunities by enabling femtocell synchronisation and location, tracking of people and assets, and localized advertising over mobile TV devices in deep indoor locations such as shopping malls, hotels, campuses and factories with seamless delivery leveraging broadcast TV signals. They add that to date there has been no single location solution that worked across all environments and that traditional positioning systems are satellite-based, designed for outdoor applications and have limitations both indoors and in urban environments.

The ALLOY client combines the ALLOY chip with a high-sensitivity A-GPS chip into a tightly-coupled hybrid TV-GPS solution which works across all types of environments: rural, suburban, urban, and indoor. Broadcast TV signals are said to enjoy a 100,000x power margin advantage over GPS thus extending location and synchronization capabilities deep into buildings and urban environments. Location-enabled TV thus provides a platform for new and expanded revenue streams for broadcasters and carriers.

"The success of these applications will depend on the pervasive availability of the location technologies that enable them. Alternative positioning technologies such as ALLOY are critical (in addressing the limitations of GPS)... By 2014, ABI Research expects 40 million unit shipments for femtocells. This presents an exciting market opportunity for innovative solutions like those from Rosum that solve problems of indoor positioning and synchronization, which are critical for mass-market femtocell deployment", predicted says Aditya Kaul, Practice Director, Mobile Networks for ABI Research.