Efficient HDTV and 3DTV services over DVB-T2 using Multiple PLPs with Layered Media

[EN] The high bit rates of high-definition or 3D services require a huge share of the valuable terrestrial spectrum, especially when targeting wide coverage areas. This article describes how to provide future services with the state-of-the-art digital terrestrial TV technology DVB-T2 in a flexible and cost-efficient way. The combination of layered media such as the scalable and 3D extension of the H.264/AVC or emerging H.265/HEVC format with the physical layer pipes feature of DVB-T2 enables flexible broadcast of services with differentiated protection of the quality layers. This opens up new ways of service provisioning such as graceful degradation for mobile or fixed reception. This article shows how existing DVB-T2 and MPEG-2 transport stream mechanisms need to be configured for offering such services over DVB-T2. A detailed description of the setup of such services and the involved components is given.Hellge, C.; Wiegand, T.; Guinea Torre, E.; Gomez-Barquero, D.; Schierl, T. (2013). Efficient HDTV and 3DTV services over DVB-T2 using Multiple PLPs with Layered Media. IEEE Communications Magazine. 51(10):76-82. doi:10.1109/MCOM.2013.6619569S7682511

DVB-NGH: the Next Generation of Digital Broadcast Services to Handheld Devices

This paper reviews the main technical solutions adopted by the next-generation mobile broadcasting standard DVB-NGH, the handheld evolution of the second-generation digital terrestrial TV standard DVB-T2. The main new technical elements introduced with respect to DVB-T2 are: layered video coding with multiple physical layer pipes, time-frequency slicing, full support of an IP transport layer with a dedicated protocol stack, header compression mechanisms for both IP and MPEG-2 TS packets, new low-density parity check coding rates for the data path (down to 1/5), nonuniform constellations for 64 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and 256QAM, 4-D rotated constellations for Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK), improved time interleaving in terms of zapping time, end-to-end latency and memory consumption, improved physical layer signaling in terms of robustness, capacity and overhead, a novel distributed multiple input single output transmit diversity scheme for single-frequency networks (SFNs), and efficient provisioning of local content in SFNs. All these technological solutions, together with the high performance of DVB-T2, make DVB-NGH a real next-generation mobile multimedia broadcasting technology. In fact, DVB-NGH can be regarded the first third-generation broadcasting system because it allows for the possibility of using multiple input multiple output antenna schemes to overcome the Shannon limit of single antenna wireless communications. Furthermore, DVB-NGH also allows the deployment of an optional satellite component forming a hybrid terrestrial-satellite network topology to improve the coverage in rural areas where the installation of terrestrial networks could be uneconomical.Gómez Barquero, D.; Douillard, C.; Moss, P.; Mignone, V. (2014). DVB-NGH: the Next Generation of Digital Broadcast Services to Handheld Devices. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 60(2):246-257. doi:10.1109/TBC.2014.2313073S24625760