Time frequency slicing in the next generation mobile broadcasting standard DVB-NGH

Abstract

Terrestrial broadcasting is one of the most important means of providing television services to users in many countries. The increasing demand of high quality services and the growing number of mobile users is leading operators and broadcasters to face the evolution of the existing networks with the inclusion of new transmission techniques. Among these, Time Frequency Slicing (TFS) is one of the most important techniques to be used in the future of the digital terrestrial broadcasting. The TFS principle consists in transmitting the services across several channels with frequency hopping and time-slicing, breaking the existing paradigm of transmitting TV services in single RF channels (multiplexes). TFS can provide important gains both in terms of capacity due to improved statistical multiplexing, and coverage due to improved frequency diversity which may boost robustness for the provisioning of services to mobile users or even increase the available capacity in the existing networks.