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

Abstract

FOBTV-13-01 1Abstract-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 LDPC coding rates for the data path (down to 1/5), non-uniform constellations for 64QAM and 256QAM, fourdimensional rotated constellations for 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 MISO transmit diversity scheme for 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 MIMO 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. to Handheld) [4], were developed to support large scale consumption of mass multimedia services such as mobile television (TV). However, the adoption of mobile TV services did not fulfill the initial expectations due to the lack of a successful business model and the high costs associated to the deployment of new mobile broadcasting networks. Today, a new generation of mobile broadcasting technologies is emerging due to the continuously increasing requirements and expectations of both users and operators, incorporating the latest advances in wireless communications which provide significant capacity and coverage performance improvements compared to first generation mobile broadcast systems. IndexDVB-NGH (Next Generation Handheld) [5] is the handheld evolution of DVB-T2 (Terrestrial 2nd Generation) [6], the most advanced digital terrestrial TV (DTT) technology in the world, offering more robustness, flexibility and at least 50% more spectrum efficiency than any other technology [7].DVB-NGH was created with the objective of becoming the reference mobile multimedia broadcasting standard. However, DVB-NGH not only succeeds significantly outperforming existing mobile broadcasting technologies in terms of capacity and coverage, but also optimizing DVB-T2 in many aspects. Furthermore, DVB-NGH is the first broadcasting system to incorporate Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna schemes as the key technology to overcome the S...

Non-Uniform Constellations for Next-Generation Digital Terrestrial Broadcast Systems

“…Standardization activities were also addressed on the development of mobile broadcasting systems, despite the lack of market and financing needed [13]. The handheld evolution of DVB-T2, Digital Video Broadcasting -Next Generation Handheld (DVB-NGH), is the state-of-the-art standard for DTT mobile communications, and includes some of the most advanced transmission techniques to cope with adversities and characteristics of mobile channels [14]. It was the first broadcasting system including the concept of onedimensional Non-Uniform Constellation (NUC), for 64 and 256 orders.…”

“…The DVB-NGH technical specification [14] was the first terrestrial broadcasting standard supporting MIMO [75]. In DVB-NGH, field measurements were also used to develop representative channel models for mobile and fixed receptions, which can be found defined in [27].…”

“…As a drawback, BIL affects the hardware implementation. In this dissertation, a 3-stage BIL is used, which has been defined in ATSC 3.0 [15] and DVB-NGH [14] specifications. This BIL consists of a parity interleaver, a group-wise interleaver and a block interleaver.…”

“…Results can be also extended to any multi-RF technology, such as Time-Frequency Slicing (TFS) [60]. TFS was proposed in DVB-T2 and adopted in DVB-NGH (Next-Generation Handheld) [14]. With TFS the data is transmitted in a slotby-slot manner by frequency hopping across an RF-Mux of two or more RF channels (in practice, up to 6).…”

“…Hence, the demapping complexity is drastically increased, compared to 2D. For this reason, 4D rotation was only adopted for QPSK in the DVB-NGH specification [14]. In this thesis, we only consider a 2D rotation with NURCs, since they require a very high demapping complexity compared with QPSK.…”