Semianalytical Approach to the PDF of SINR in HPHT and LPLT Single-Frequency Networks

(c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this[EN] Single-frequency networks (SFN) are widely adopted in terrestrial broadcast networks based on high-power high-tower (HPHT) deployments. The mobile broadcasting standard Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) has been enhanced in Release 14 to enable SFN operation with larger CP duration which may allow for the deployment of large area SFNs and even the combined operation between HPHT and low-power low-tower (LPLT) cellular stations. The knowledge of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) distribution over an SFN area may facilitate the selection of transmission parameters according to the network topology. This paper presents a semianalytical method for the calculation of the SINR distribution in SFNs with low computational complexity compared to Monte Carlo simulations. The method, which builds on previous work developed for cellular communications, is applied to HPHT+LPLT SFNs and evaluated against different transmission and network parameters.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain, under Grant TEC2014-56483-R, in part by European FEDER funds.Gimenez Gandia, JJ.; Sung, KW.; Gomez-Barquero, D. (2018). Semianalytical Approach to the PDF of SINR in HPHT and LPLT Single-Frequency Networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. 67(5):4173-4181. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2018.2791347S4173418167

Scattered Pilot Performance and Optimization for ATSC 3.0

[EN] The next-generation U.S. digital terrestrial television (DTT) standard ATSC 3.0 is the most flexible DTT standard ever developed, outperforming the state-of-the-art digital video broadcasting-terrestrial 2nd generation (DVB-T2) standard. This higher flexibility allows broadcasters to select the configuration that better suits the coverage and capacity requirements per service. Regarding the selection of pilot patterns, whereas DVB-T2 provides eight different patterns with a unique pilot amplitude, ATSC 3.0 expands up to 16, with five different amplitudes per pattern. This paper focuses on the pilot pattern and amplitude performance and optimization for time and power multiplexing modes, time division multiplexing and layered division multiplexing (LDM), respectively, of ATSC 3.0. The selection of the optimum pilot configuration is not straightforward. On the one hand, the pilots must be sufficiently dense to follow channel fluctuations. On the other hand, as long as pilot density is increased, more data overhead is introduced. Moreover, this selection is particularly essential in LDM mode, because the LDM implementation in ATSC 3.0 requires that both layers share all the waveform parameters, including pilot pattern configuration. In addition, there is an error proportional to the channel estimate of the top layer that affects to the lower layer performance.This work was supported in part by the Institute for Information and Communications Technology (IITP) by the Korea Government (MSIP) (Development of Service and Transmission Technology for Convergent Realistic Broadcast) under Grant R0101-15-294, and in part by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Spain, by European FEDER Funds under Grant TEC2014-56483-R.Garro, E.; Gimenez, JJ.; Park, SI.; Gomez-Barquero, D. (2017). Scattered Pilot Performance and Optimization for ATSC 3.0. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 63(1):282-292. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBC.2016.2630304S28229263

Wideband Broadcasting: A Power-Efficient Approach to 5G Broadcasting

(c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this[EN] Efficient and flexible use of spectrum will be inherent characteristics of fifth-generation (5G) communication technologies with native support of wideband operation with frequency reuse 1, i.e. all transmit sites use all available frequency resources. Although not from the very first 5G release of 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project), it is expected that broadcast/multicast technology components will later be added and fully integrated in the 5G system. The combination of both wideband and frequency reuse 1 may provide significant gains for broadcast transmissions in terms of energy efficiency, since it is more efficient to increase capacity by extending the bandwidth rather than increasing the transmit power over a given bandwidth. This breaks with the traditional concept of terrestrial broadcast frequency planning, and paves the way to new potential uses of UHF (Ultra High Frequency) spectrum bands for 5G broadcasting. This paper provides an insight into the fundamental advantages in terms of capacity, coverage as well as power saving of wideband broadcast operation. The role of the network deployment, linked to frequency reuse in the UHF band, and its influence in the performance of a Wideband Broadcasting system are discussed. The technical requirements and features that would enable such power-efficient solution are also addressed.This work was supported in part by the European Commission under the 5G-PPP project 5G-Xcast (H2020-ICT-2016-2 call, grant number 761498). The views expressed in this contribution are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the project. This work was also partially supported by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain (TEC2014-56483-R), co-funded by European FEDER funds.Gimenez Gandia, JJ.; Gomez-Barquero, D.; Mogarde, J.; Stare, E. (2018). Wideband Broadcasting: A Power-Efficient Approach to 5G Broadcasting. IEEE Communications Magazine. 56(3):119-125. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2018.170067511912556

Information-Theoretic Analysis and Performance Evaluation of Optimal Demappers for Multi-Layer Broadcast Systems

(c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this[EN] Multi-layer broadcast systems distribute services across time and frequency domain by means of power-division multiplexing. Successive interference cancelation is required, in general, in order to extract the content of all services. For a low-complexity implementation, the receiver can obtain the strongest (top-layer) signal assuming underlying signals to behave like thermal noise. The thermal noise assumption may not be valid under certain conditions and a more accurate characterization of the interference could bring improved performance. This paper analyzes the validity of the noise-like assumption considering the power ratio between signals and the required carrier-to-noise ratio for error-free reception. The main contribution of the paper is the proposal of a demapping algorithm that exploits the knowledge of the constellation of underlying signals. Generalized mutual information, performance evaluation, and complexity analysis are provided with the additive white Gaussian noise-like assumptions and with the proposed alternative in order to assess the potential performance improvements that can be achieved.This work was supported by in part by the Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia, Spain under Grant TEC2014-56483-R, and in part by the European FEDER Funds.Garro, E.; Gimenez Gandia, JJ.; Klenner, P.; Gomez-Barquero, D. (2018). Information-Theoretic Analysis and Performance Evaluation of Optimal Demappers for Multi-Layer Broadcast Systems. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 64(4):781-790. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBC.2018.2799300S78179064

Practical Performance Measurements of LTE Broadcast (eMBMS) for TV Applications

The 3GPP Release-14 specification has enhanced LTE eMBMS to enable the provision of television services according to some of the requirements of the broadcasting industry. These improvements include radio interface enhancements such as support for larger inter-site distances in Single Frequency Network deployments and the introduction of more flexibility including a dedicated eMBMS carrier with 100% broadcast resource allocation. Although the performance of LTE eMBMS has been extensively evaluated by numerical computations, it is crucial to perform laboratory measurements that provide insights into the operation of the system in a practical setup. This paper describes the construction of eMBMS chains within the laboratory to carry out physical-layer measurements within a controlled environment and presents a methodology to measure the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) of eMBMS signals (that can time multiplex both unicast and broadcast parts). The SNR thresholds at different modulation and coding schemes are measured independently in the laboratories of BBC R&D and IRT and the results are compared with the results obtained with numerical evaluations

5G Radio Access Network Architecture for Terrestrial Broadcast Services

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) enhanced Multicast Broadcast Multimedia Service (eMBMS) a set of new features to support the distribution of Terrestrial Broadcast services in Release 14. On the other hand, a new 5th Generation (5G) system architecture and radio access technology, 5G New Radio (NR), are being standardised from Release 15 onwards, which so far have only focused on unicast connectivity. This may change in Release 17 given a new Work Item set to specify basic Radio Access Network (RAN) functionalities for the provision of multicast/broadcast communications for NR. This work initially excludes some of the functionalities originally supported for Terrestrial Broadcast services under LTE e.g. free to air, receive-only mode, large-area single frequency networks, etc. This paper proposes an enhanced Next Generation RAN architecture based on 3GPP Release 15 with a series of architectural and functional enhancements, to support an efficient, flexible and dynamic selection between unicast and multicast/broadcast transmission modes and also the delivery of Terrestrial Broadcast services. The paper elaborates on the Cloud-RAN based architecture and proposes new concepts such as the RAN Broadcast/Multicast Areas that allows a more flexible deployment in comparison to eMBMS. High-level assessment methodologies including complexity analysis and inspection are used to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed architecture design and compare it with the 3GPP architectural requirements.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, IEEE Trans. Broadcastin

5G New Radio for Terrestrial Broadcast: A Forward-Looking Approach for NR-MBMS

"© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permissíon from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertisíng or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works."[EN] 3GPP LTE eMBMS release (Rel-) 14, also referred to as further evolved multimedia broadcast multicast service (FeMBMS) or enhanced TV (EnTV), is the first mobile broadband technology standard to incorporate a transmission mode designed to deliver terrestrial broadcast services from conventional high power high tower (HPHT) broadcast infrastructure. With respect to the physical layer, the main improvements in FeMBMS are the support of larger inter-site distance for single frequency networks (SFNs) and the ability to allocate 100% of a carrier's resources to the broadcast payload, with self-contained signaling in the downlink. From the system architecture perspective, a receive-only mode enables free-to-air (FTA) reception with no need for an uplink or SIM card, thus receiving content without user equipment registration with a network. These functionalities are only available in the LTE advanced pro specifications as 5G new radio (NR), standardized in 3GPP from Rel-15, has so far focused entirely on unicast. This paper outlines a physical layer design for NR-MBMS, a system derived, with minor modifications, from the 5G-NR specifications, and suitable for the transmission of linear TV and radio services in either single-cell or SFN operation. This paper evaluates the NR-MBMS proposition and compares it to LTE-based FeMBMS in terms of flexibility, performance, capacity, and coverage.This work was supported in part by the European Commission through the 5G-PPP Project 5G-Xcast (H2020-ICT-2016-2 call) under Grant 761498.Gimenez, JJ.; Carcel, JL.; Fuentes, M.; Garro, E.; Elliott, S.; Vargas, D.; Menzel, C.... (2019). 5G New Radio for Terrestrial Broadcast: A Forward-Looking Approach for NR-MBMS. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 65(2):356-368. https://doi.org/10.1109/TBC.2019.291211735636865

Demonstrating Immersive Media Delivery on 5G Broadcast and Multicast Testing Networks

This work presents eight demonstrators and one showcase developed within the 5G-Xcast project. They experimentally demonstrate and validate key technical enablers for the future of media delivery, associated with multicast and broadcast communication capabilities in 5th Generation (5G). In 5G-Xcast, three existing testbeds: IRT in Munich (Germany), 5GIC in Surrey (UK), and TUAS in Turku (Finland), have been developed into 5G broadcast and multicast testing networks, which enables us to demonstrate our vision of a converged 5G infrastructure with fixed and mobile accesses and terrestrial broadcast, delivering immersive audio-visual media content. Built upon the improved testing networks, the demonstrators and showcase developed in 5G-Xcast show the impact of the technology developed in the project. Our demonstrations predominantly cover use cases belonging to two verticals: Media & Entertainment and Public Warning, which are future 5G scenarios relevant to multicast and broadcast delivery. In this paper, we present the development of these demonstrators, the showcase, and the testbeds. We also provide key findings from the experiments and demonstrations, which not only validate the technical solutions developed in the project, but also illustrate the potential technical impact of these solutions for broadcasters, content providers, operators, and other industries interested in the future immersive media delivery.Comment: 16 pages, 22 figures, IEEE Trans. Broadcastin