Performance evaluation of the MPE-iFEC Sliding RS Encoding for DVB-H streaming services

RS (Reed - Solomon) code is used in DVB-H (digital video broadcasting - handheld) system as an addtional error correcting code to improve the performance during mobile reception. LDPC (low density parity check) code which is rediscovered recently shows the astonishing performance. Therefore LDPC code can be used to replace RS code in order to improve the performance further since both of them are block codes. So the performance of LDPC code in MPE-FEC (multi protocol encapsulation - forward error correction) frame of DVB-H system is analyzed in this paper.

Wireless Billboard Channels (WBCs) are a proposal for novel broadcast advertisement channel which will be integral to realising the Consumer-centric Business Model (CBM) within the new emerging Ubiquitous Consumer Wireless World (UCWW), their primary goal of facilitating the service of Advertisement, Discovery and Association (ADA) of wireless access networks and teleservices in the UCWW. In the principal research presented in this thesis the author has investigated the conceptualisation, design, implementation and testing of a WBC established over a Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld (DVB-H) platform. The thesis addresses how realising this goal the following objectives were successfully achieved in the research work and are described in the thesis:  The creation of a foundational WBC infrastructure.  The elaboration of a WBC framework, interface and protocol architecture.  The development of a fully operational WBC system prototype.  The investigation and implementation of suitable WBC carrier technologies. The WBC system proposed and designed has been developed along three architectural layers – physical, link and service layers. In designing the service layer, to achieve an extensible, flexible, configurable and maintainable system, the WBC Service Provider (WBC-SP) and Mobile User (MU)’s software architecture has been proposed. A number of intelligent algorithms have been developed for advertisement’s collecting, clustering, scheduling, indexing, discovery and association in Multi-Agents System (MAS) environment. A new WBC Advertisements Delivery Protocol (ADP) has been designed and developed for delivering advertisement over unidirectional WBCs to MU simultaneously. In the link layer, and specifically dictated by DVB-H link layer conditions, a novel cross-layer Multi-Protocol Encapsulation - Forward Error Correction (MPE-FEC) coding and decoding schemes were proposed for improving reliability. Realising the DVB-H physical layer was achieved through a specially constructed laboratory testbed infrastructure, using a DVB-H physical layer simulator. Besides the design and implementation of this layered, distributed, intelligent, and heterogeneous WBCs system, the research work included the proofing and refining of aspects of the designs. Also carried out was the operational testing, performance evaluation and scalability evaluation of the core WBCs elements. WBC carrier technologies other than DVB-H were also explored, e.g. Terrestrial- Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB). The work has yielded over 20 internationally published research papers to date, including one in the IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics and two in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking.

This paper investigates how Scalable Video Coding (SVC) can benefit from different Forward Error Correction (FEC) and transmission schemes in mobile broadcast systems. Simulation are performed in DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) systems. In DVB-H, a differentiation in robustness for the different SVC layers can be achieved at the link layer using intra-burst MPE-FEC (multi-Protocol Encapsulation FEC). The paper evaluates the gain that can be achieved with the MPE-FEC using equal (EEP) and unequal error protection (UEP), and the performance improvements of an SVC layer-aware FEC (LA-FEC) approach that can be implemented in DVB-H either at the link layer with MPE-iFEC (inter-burst MPE-FEC) or at the application layer with AL-FEC. LA-FEC improves the SVC base layer robustness generating parity information across existing dependencies within the SVC video coding structure. Laboratory measurement results using a TU6 channel model show that the performance of an SVC service in DVB-H can be significantly increased by a proper link layer FEC scheme. It is shown that using SVC in combination with LA-FEC and a proper transmission scheduling does not only give a better performance in terms of PSNR and amount of video outages compared to a single layer service at the same service bit rate, but also gives an additional lower quality layer which can be used for applications like conditional access.

All digital television broadcast schemes require some form of forward error correction. Trellis coded modulation and Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are two of the most commonly used error correction strategies. While RS codes have been used for a fairly long time in various applications and are well understood, use of trellis coded modulation has been restricted mostly to telephone modems. We explain the principles of trellis coded modulation and how trellis codes can be chosen as part of the error correction strategy for digital television broadcasting. A variety of coding and interleaving schemes that can be used to obtain the desired performance for compressed TV signal transmission is discussed. The nature of the terrestrial channel and the system performance requirements for a high definition television (HDTV) system are described, including a coding strategy called concatenated coding. >

Digital video broadcasting (DVB) provides the opportunity for high-speed video, audio, internet and data delivery direct to user homes and offices. Today Ethernet transfers /protocols/ such as Internet is the most frequently way to transfer data all over the world. The future goals are to reduce the use cables, making portable devices and union of different standards. The digital video broadcasting (DVB) offers a suitable way to comply with these requirements. There two standards for transferring IP datagrams over DVB-S: multi-protocol encapsulation and ultra light encapsulation. These protocols share a common goal to provide interface specifications for the support of the same services (e.g. telephony, internet access, remote access, videoconferencing, etc.). The aim of this paper is design and development of generic standard module with HDL for integration in wireless based Internet devices with relation with system on packaging technology. The module can be easy configured and integrated in any FPGA or ASIC system. The designed module can also work with user specific data protocols which must comply with DVB standard.

In this chapter, we describe different forward error correction (FEC) schemes currently in use or suitable for use in optical communication systems. We start with the description of standard block codes. The state-of-the-art in optical communication systems standardized by the ITU employ concatenated Bose–Chaudhuri–Hocquenghem (BCH)/RS codes [1, 2]. The RS(255,239), in particular, has been used in a broad range of long-haul communication systems [1, 2], and it is commonly considered as the first-generation of FEC [3, 4]. The elementary FEC schemes (BCH, RS, or convolutional codes) may be combined to design more powerful FEC schemes, e.g., RS(255,239) + RS(255,233). Several classes of concatenation codes are listed in ITU-T G975.1. Different concatenation schemes, such as the concatenation of two RS codes or the concatenation of RS and convolutional codes, are commonly considered as second generation of FEC [3, 4].

The DVB-H technology (digital video broadcasting - handheld) extends mobile connectivity of handheld terminals, specifically offering mobile television and other broadcasting services to small portable devices. This paper presents a performance analysis and a proposal for a parameter optimization of the time interleaving scheme included in the DVB-H forward error correction. Various sets of parameters are studied and optimized with respect to the link performance. An enhanced time interleaving scheme is proposed and evaluated. The channel characteristics used for the analysis correspond to typical mobile usage scenarios which are challenging for the forward error correction.

Forward error correction (FEC) is a key capability in modern satellite communications that provide the system designer with the needed flexibility to comply with the different applications' requirements. Reed-Solomon (RS) codes are well known for their ability to optimize between the system power, bandwidth, data rate, and the quality of service. This paper introduces an efficient decoding scheme for decoding the RS codes adhering to the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) standards based on Justesen's construction of concatenation. To maintain the standard output size, the proposed scheme first encodes every m - 1 bits using the single-parity-check (SPC) code, while the RS code encodes K SPC codewords into N symbols that are of the same size as CCSDS standard. Decoding on the inner SPC code is based on maximum-likelihood decoding Kaneko algorithm, while for the proposed coding scheme, the reduced test-pattern Chase algorithm is adapted for decoding the outer RS code. The simulation results show the coding gains of 1.4 and 7 dB compared with the algebraic decoding of RS codes over the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels, respectively. Moreover, the adopted reduced test-pattern Chase algorithm for decoding the RS code achieves an overall complexity reduction of 40% compared with the conventional Chase decoding algorithm.

This paper examines the impact of satellite transponder nonlinearities on the performance of protected tactical waveform (PTW) for the return link (RL). The performance impact due to adjacent channels interference (ACI) and a partial band noise jammer (PBNJ) are considered in the paper. In this paper, a Shaleh model is used to model the transponder traveling wave tube amplifier (TWTA). This TWTA is protected by a soft limiter to prevent TWTA operation in the saturation region. Impact of signal clipping due to this soft limiter under a PBNJ is also investigated. Computer simulations are performed using Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite - Second generation (DVB-S2) forward error correcting (FEC) codes. In addition, a ground hub receiver does not assume knowledge of the channel information. Ground hub is required to estimate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and details of SNR estimation are also discussed in the paper.

Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H) specification suite enables reception of point-to-multipoint multimedia transmission with mobile devices. It provides good forward error correction (FEC) capabilities to combat transmission errors. However, transmission errors can be occasionally so severe that FEC decoding fails. The residual transmission errors can degrade the audio-visual quality dramatically. This paper presents an error control method, called synchronized audio redundancy coding. It aims to ensure audio continuity under severe channel error conditions. The presented method was compared to conventional FEC-based error protection of DVB-H in a large-scale subjective experiment. It was found that synchronized audio redundancy coding outperformed the conventional error protection in most test cases.

In digital broadcasting system single frequency network (SFN) technologies are often considered for the efficiency of frequency allotment. In SFN, All the transmitters within the broadcasting service area use the same frequency. In this paper, we discuss the performance and evaluate some coverage criterions for SFN in digital video broadcasting - terrestrial (DVB-T) and on-channel repeater (OCR) in the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). Also, we propose method and simulation for coverage planning and estimation.

The aim of this project was to investigate and implement Soft In Soft Out decoder based on Reed Solomon Codes. This type of error correction is widely used in data communication applications, such as Digital Video Broadcast (DVB), optical carriers and Space Data Systems (CCSDS) primary choice is RS Codes by Consultative committee for deep space communications signal error correction.

DVB-H is a new broadcasting standard, which offers reliable high data rate reception of IP packets for mobile handheld battery-powered devices. A link layer with multiprotocol encapsulation (MPE), including Reed-Solomon forward error correction (FEC) combined with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC), is defined in the standard to work on top of the DVB-T physical layer. For error correction in the receiver the DVB-H standard suggests to use erasure decoding based on the CRC information. Yet, the decoding method is not strictly determined in the standard. This paper investigates the performance of five different Reed-Solomon decoding schemes for the DVB-H link layer forward error correction called MPE-FEC. They differ on utilization strategy of existing erasure information. The performance of different decoding methods are evaluated analytically in an binary symmetric channel (BSC) and with simulations in the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and a mobile fading channel. For the simulations in the fading channel a packet channel model based on actual measurements is designed. It is shown that more sophisticated decoding methods than the one suggested in the standard are required for efficient retrieval of IP packets

The emerging DVB-IPTV compliant Set-Top Box (STB) requires accurate Clock synchronization for congested IP (Internet Protocol) networks. The jitter present in this environment is very high compared to DVB-S (Digital Video Broadcast -Satellite) or DVB-T(Digital Video Broadcast -Terrestrial). Researchers in the similar field have suggested the process of clock synchronization over the packet switched networks phenomena. This paper reviews various issues and techniques involved in achieving clock recovery for packet switched networks. This paper provides good summary of work done till date for designing clock recovery algorithms suited for IP STB application.

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