NAB Presents Its 2011 Technology Innovation Awards

The third annual NAB Technology Innovation Awards were presented at the 2011 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, based on a competitive selection process among the nominations received by the March 4, 2011 deadline. NAB presents these awards to organizations that bring advanced communications technology exhibits and demonstrations of significant merit to the NAB Show. The technologies demonstrated cannot include commercial products offered for sale prior to or at the NAB Show. This year's winners are NPR Labs and Communications Research Centre Canada.

NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith presented the awards at the NAB Technology Luncheon on April 13, 2011, held in conjunction with the Broadcast Engineering Conference. During the presentation, Smith said, “In an ever-changing media world, broadcasting remains at the forefront, constantly innovating to deliver the best services to our listeners and viewers. And it is because of those of you in this room – the innovators – that free, over-the-air broadcasting continues to build a strong and successful future.”

NPR Labs

As one of America's few not-for-profit broadcast technology research and development centers, NPR Labs is engaged with technical research projects supporting the interests of U.S. public radio stations. In the International Research Park (IRP) at the 2011 NAB Show, NPR Labs presented its results to date on three current projects.

The first was a proposed system for providing “captioned radio” (i.e., the display of text on a radio receiver’s screen presenting transcription of the current audio broadcast), for use by the 23 million hearing-impaired Americans unable to directly access live radio programming and emergency alerts. A second exhibit demonstrated a new Personalized Audio Information Service (PAIS), the primary application of which is the capture of over-the-air radio reading-service transmissions and the organization of individual stories for indexed, on-demand playback by blind and low-vision listeners, utilizing HD Radio technology. Finally, NPR Labs presented its advanced IBOC interference propagation mapping application, intended to produce highly accurate coverage maps for HD Radio stations.

Mike Starling, Executive Director of NPR’s Technology Research Center and NPR Labs, accepted the Technology Innovation award.

Communication Research Centre Canada

Well known in the world of media R&D, the Communications Research Centre (CRC) is the Canadian government’s primary laboratory for research and development in advanced telecommunications. The organization received its award for a range of developments it displayed at the 2011 NAB Show, which were also found among this year’s International Research Park exhibits.

CRC’s demonstrations included its audio loudness metering scheme that has become the basis for the ITU BS.1770 loudness measurement algorithm, along with a proposed system for audio-quality metrics, and a 2D-to-3D video conversion technology generating high-quality 3D video at low cost. CRC also showcased the first FM-RDS radio application that can be distributed through the Android market, which also enables “hybrid” radio broadcasts converging on-air and online radio services. Other exhibits from CRC presented high-quality video frame-rate conversion, software-defined radio for broadcast applications, and the COVLAB broadcast coverage prediction system.

Accepting the Technology Innovation award for Communications Research Centre Canada was its Principal Research Scientist, Dr. Yiyan Wu.

“While technological innovations are evident throughout the product displays on the NAB Show exhibit floor, we’re particularly pleased to showcase technological developments in media that haven’t reached the marketplace yet,” said NAB Senior Vice President of Science and Technology Lynn Claudy. “The NAB Technology Innovation Awards celebrate those glimpses of the future, and the demonstrations by CRC and NPR Labs are well deserving winners among a growing field of competitive entries.”

NAB Science and Technology congratulates this year’s winners for their outstanding work and commitment to continued advancement of the broadcasting industry.