The DVB’s Steering Board has approved a new specification — DVB-NGH (Next Generation Handheld). Based on DVB-T2, it includes many improvements and extensions in NGH to aid mobile and portable reception.
Additional features to the specification include MIMO (Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output), Time Frequency Slicing (TFS) with a single tuner, non-uniform constellations, improved and extended LDPC codes for lower code rates, more efficient time interleaving, and ultra-robust layer-1 signaling.
The new specification also covers a hybrid profile where terrestrial and satellite transmission schemes can be combined. It will be submitted immediately to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) for formal standardization and then an NGH BlueBook will be published.
Since the introduction of DVB-H, significant changes have taken place in the delivery and consumption of multimedia content. Initially, DVB-H was launched to provide linear broadcast services (e.g., TV and radio) for handheld devices.
However, the multimedia content market is going through a profound change from traditional linear content consumption to a wide range of rich media content consumption, the DVD said. This rich media includes traditional TV (linear), various video and audio content, images and text messages, as well as push download to local memory in the receiver.
The delivery of the content has to keep pace with the user’s demand and behavior. DVB-NGH is designed to be the ideal solution for broadcast content delivery to handheld and mobile devices for the next decade.
“NGH covers the latest modulation as well as coding technologies and can be regarded as the most sophisticated terrestrial broadcast air interface,” said Peter Siebert, the DVB’s executive director. “It also offers additional operational flexibility, such as different protection for audio and video streams in one service.”
Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is an industry-led consortium of more than 230 broadcasters, manufacturers, network operators, software developers, regulatory bodies and others committed to designing global standards for the delivery of digital television and data services.
DVB standards cover all aspects of digital television, from transmission through interfacing, conditional access and interactivity for digital video, audio and data. The consortium came together in 1993 to create unity in the move towards global standardization, interoperability and future proofing.
