Fundamentals of DVB-H broadcasting transmission and reception

Abstract

The digital broadcasting standard DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) enables a high data rate broadcast access for hand-held terminals (e.g., portable, pocket-size battery-operated phones) [5-8]. The broadband downstream channel features a useful data rate of up to several Mbps and may be used for audio and video streaming applications, file downloads, and many other kinds of services. The DVB-H technology is an extension of DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting - Terrestrial) [6] and takes the specific properties of typical hand-held terminals into account. The three main new physical-layer techniques that have been introduced for DVB-H are time slicing, MPE-FEC (Multi-Protocol Encapsulation- Forward Error Correction), and the 4K mode [5,6]. First, DVB-H uses time slicing, a power-saving algorithm based on the time-multiplexed transmission of different services. This technique results in a battery power-saving effect and allows soft handover if one moves from a network cell to another one. Secondly, for reliable transmission in poor signal reception conditions, an enhanced error-protection scheme, called MPE-FEC, is introduced. Thirdly, the 4K mode (next to the 2K and 8K mode of DVB-T) for OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) is defined, addressing the specific needs of hand-held terminals. The 4K mode aims to offer an additional trade-off between transmission cell size and mobile reception capabilities, providing an additional degree of flexibility for DVB-H network planning for single-frequency networks (SFNs). These techniques make DVB-H a very promising standard for broadcast services requiring high data rates for handheld devices and offer extended possibilities for content providers and network operators. The outline of this chapter is as follows. Several characteristics of a DVB-H system, which are needed for coverage planning, are discussed in Sect. 1.2. Section 1.3 presents coverage planning and throughput versus range for a DVB-H network using several path loss (PL) models. Link budget calculations are elaborated for a realistic example. Next, Sect. 1.4 describes propagation measurements of a DVB-H signal and the methodology to develop a PL model. The methodology is illustrated using results of the Flemish DVB-H trial. In Sect. 1.5, the parameter evaluation and performance analysis of a DVB-H system based on measurements are discussed. DVB-H network design for indoor reception is described in Sect. 1.6. This section includes the calculation of the required number of base stations (BS) for good indoor coverage for a region and the relation with the required carrier-to-noise ratio. Finally, conclusions are formulated in Sect. 1.7. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.