FLO

Forward Link Only (FLO) is the transmission technology behind the MediaFLO system from Qualcomm for the transmission of multimedia content to mobile and handheld devices.

FLO uses a small number of transmission towers with a high transmitter power to transmit television and other multimedia content to mobile devices. FLO uses OFDM transmission with 4K carriers (4096). Each carriers is QPSK or 16-QAM modulated with a small portion of the total amount of data. Just as DVB-H, FLO uses a form of time-slicing, which means that specific content is transmitted in specific time intervals. This allows the receiver to be switched on only at particular transmission bursts to save power.

FLO can be used in a number of bands between 450 MHz and 3 GHz. Qualcomm has a license for nationwide coverage of FLO in a 6 MHz block of the lower 700 MHz band (channel 55) in the US.