Advancement through Interactive Radio
S. Revi Sterling
University of Colorado at Boulder
ATLAS Institute
AIR Space
• AIR operates at the intersection of women,
technology and participatory development.
• Women’s advancement is recognized as central
to sustainable development.
• Radio most popular mass medium: “Africa’s
Internet;” increased focus on Community Radio
by agencies and development experts alike
Enables women’s voices and
knowledge to be publicized, recognized
in a culturally appropriate venue
without incurring the barriers to ICT
access that are unique – and possibly
harmful – to women: cost, literacy, time,
location, safety and perceived relevance
What AIR is
• A custom communications device to
assist in women’s, and thus community,
advancement
• A mechanism that enables women to
“talk back” on radio airwaves, giving
radio limited interactivity
• Research that tests several social and
development theories
• A system: handset, hardware, software,
community radio
• Based on women’s requirements
• An interim solution until:
• Rural communities are on cellular
and electrical grid
• Women can afford cell phones
• Women are permitted to be more
active, vocal and mobile members of
their communities
What AIR is not
• A cell phone
– Sub-Saharan Africa may be the fastest
growing cell market, but 50% of region has no
cell coverage (World Bank, IEEE 2007)
– Women’s ownership issues: “men will take
then and sell them”
– Goal is to not incur cost to end user (minutes,
recharge)
• An exercise in gender mainstreaming
– Specific gender-bias in deployment: women’s
self-help groups – strength in numbers, local
expertise
– Men already interact with station – 95% of
incoming calls
– Male buy-in (chief, station personnel)
• A (very) top-down approach
– Feasibility studies, “Search Conference”
– Women create content and usage plan
– Developed model based on PAR tenets
(Stoecker 2005)
PAR “Action Cycle”
Women and Community Radio
Number of CR stations in sub-Saharan Africa has grown from 10 to
more than 800 in past 2 decades
• Ubiquitous appeal: 100% listener base
– 91% (USAID 2005 study)
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Local language
Batteries as high a priority as food
Shared and mobile radios
Women (and men) act on CR content
• Universal problem: Increasing women’s
participation
– Only handful of stations have women’s
programming content
– Past efforts include DTR, IRI – not sustainable
– Consumption models (push) not production
model (pull)
• Women have a lot to say
– “Citizen journalist” – generate new
knowledge
– Empowerment in use, recording, public
identity
CR recognized for potential role in MDG, increased funding from
foundations and agencies as higher-tech ICTs fail to take root
Push v. Pull
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“Globalisation from below” (Massey 1994)
Information exchange rather than information dissemination
Women deliver local news
Knowledge production/sharing
Timely reporting
Women request relevant programming content – health
information, livelihood information, skills training, human/women’s
rights, cultural preservation
• Women’s voices heard in the mainstream changes not only content,
but perception of women (by self, others in community)
“We want women's voices to be heard, we are telling our stories
directly and we are giving a voice to the voiceless. We found we
were always downloading and never uploading… There is so much
knowledge in rural communities, and we have to let people know
about what happening.” (Sibanda 2005)
AIR Hardware Features
• Very low power design based on ARM processor – 7 day operation
• Efficient switch-mode power supply
• Stand-alone runtime system
• Simple push-to-talk operation – button and microphone
• Commodity 802.11 and Flash RAM USB devices for networking & storage
• Swappable depending on necessary voice storage and network capabilities
• Non-volatile RAM reduces potential for data loss
• Speech is amplified and passed through a low-frequency bandpass filter
before A/D conversion
• Uses Speex (non-proprietary) Codec
• Reduces memory usage for voice storage
• High frequency cut-off of the bandpass filter optimized for female voices
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LEDs provide device and transmission status information
“Voicemail” software client on radio station PC for post-production
Weighs less than 100 grams
Portable solar recharge stations (additional income generation)
External board facilitates debugging and software development
Device Block Diagram
Delay-tolerant Network Design
• Store-and-forward model: attempt to use the minimum
number of redundant transmissions to other devices to
accomplish successful delivery. If all messages get through,
parameters are relaxed; if some messages dropped,
transmission parameters are made more aggressive.
• Each voice message has associated metadata
• When devices come within range of each other, they exchange
metadata to determine transmission status
• Messages are transmitted based upon probabilistic adaptive
algorithm that considers:
• # of other devices to which the message has been successfully
transmitted
• A record of devices most often in-range/most mobile
• Available power of transmitting device
• The number of devices in range
• The state of these devices in range
• Reverse path for transmission delivery status (added
requirement)
Voice Routing
• Local community: using a Fidelity Comtech Phocus ArrayTM steerable
phased array 802.11 antenna mounted on radio station transmission
tower
– Sweep a semi-narrow bean across the area occupied
by the nearby community
– Dynamically reshape the antenna pattern to point
and narrow the beam when a device is detected
to increase signal range and network reliability
• Outlying communities: antenna cannot reach, but one AIR device (with
increased memory) per community will serve as primary collection
device, taken to local community on market day; transmission as above
AIR Status
• Feasibility studies, baseline surveys,
Search Conference completed (2006-7)
• Design validation (Spring 2007)
• DVR pre-prototype (Fall 2007)
• Deployment in Spring 2008
• India pilot
– Urban challenges to CR
– Based on work in Summer
2007 (MSR India)
• Interest in health & ag extension
Acknowledgements
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Microsoft Research Digital Inclusion Program
Microsoft Research Labs, India
ECONEWS Africa/Radio Mang’elete
VOICES India
Thank you
https://webfiles.colorado.edu/sterlins/www