Evaluation of cross-layer reliability mechanisms for satellite digital multimedia broadcast

This paper presents a study of some reliability mechanisms which may be put at work in the context of Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (SDMB) to mobile devices such as handheld phones. These mechanisms include error correcting codes, interleaving at the physical layer, erasure codes at intermediate layers and error concealment on the video decoder. The evaluation is made on a realistic satellite channel and takes into account practical constraints such as the maximum zapping time and the user mobility at several speeds. The evaluation is done by simulating different scenarii with complete protocol stacks. The simulations indicate that, under the assumptions taken here, the scenario using highly compressed video protected by erasure codes at intermediate layers seems to be the best solution on this kind of channel

Hybrid single frequency network propagation channel sounding

International audience

Hybrid single frequency network propagation channel sounding and antenna diversity measurements

International audienceDuring the last decade, several land mobile communication networks have been developed based on full satellite solutions such as Globalstar or Iridium systems or on huge terrestrial networks such as GSM for example. Deploying new terrestrial networks or new satellite constellations for new telecommunication or broadcast mobile systems on very large areas would be so expensive that another solution is now often considered: hybrid systems with a terrestrial segment to cover high-density built-up areas and a satellite segment to bring services to the largest part of coverage area. In the framework of Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcasting CNES project, such a hybrid mobile broadcast system was studied, in particular air interface performances. This performance assessment required a good knowledge of the hybrid single frequency network (SFN) propagation channel including a geostationary satellite and terrestrial gap fillers. The requirement for an exhaustive characterization of the hybrid SFN propagation channel involved the development of a specific channel sounding solution. Moreover, mobile telecommunication systems recently developed use spatial diversity techniques to take benefit from multipath spatial decorrelation in particular. The measurement of diversity gains in actual conditions can provide information very helpful for network deployment and air interface design. The CNES channel sounder enables to carry out such diversity measurements using only propagation data. This paper presents this channel sounder developed and used to measure the SFN radio propagation channel with four transmitters in spatial diversity configuration