Broadcast Services Research Articles

Infrastructures of dissensus: repartitioning the sensible and articulating the political through the occupation of Greece’s public broadcasting service

This article engages with contemporary debates around the politics of space and the spatiality of politics by exploring how the fabrication of emancipatory infrastructures shapes the articulation and reconfiguration of the (urban) political. Moving beyond the prevailing emphasis on urban uprisings, the article focuses on the occupation and self-management of Greece’s Public Broadcasting Service (ERT) in response to New Democracy’s government decision to dismantle it in June 2013. In this juncture, ERT workers and multiple movements and activists in solidarity occupied the Service’s buildings across the country and recuperated its infrastructures to broadcast TV and Radio programmes. ERT’s buildings became key political spaces and nodal political infrastructures in the struggle against austerity. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s conceptualization of politics as a world-making activity, the article reads these occupations as the opening of new spatialities for politics through the fabrication of infrastructures of dissensus. In this, it foregrounds the spatial and infrastructural dimensions of urban politics, explores how such infrastructure spaces reconfigure the partition of the urban sensible and traces the challenges and limitations that emerge from their encounters with the police order.

Beamforming-as-a-Service for Multicast and Broadcast Services in 5G Systems and Beyond

Beamforming-as-a-Service for Multicast and Broadcast Services in 5G Systems and Beyond

Research on SWOT Competition Strategy of Broad-cast Business of Guangzhou Tengshi

Guangzhou Tencent Network Broadcast is an exploration of the transformation and development of traditional Internet enterprises. Its main business includes three categories: music sector, live broadcast and value-added services and advertising sector. In this paper, in market competition at home and abroad for reference, on the basis of theoretical research and practical exploration achievements, the use of PEST and five models respectively analyzes the Guangzhou Ten-cent depending on the market competition of the macroscopic environment and microcosmic environment, SWOT analyses of its own advantages and disadvantages, opportunities and challenges faced by the proposed Guangzhou Tencent depending on market competition strategy, and implementation of the strategy. This paper analyzes the current situation, problems and causes of the live broadcast business of Guangzhou Tencent Company.On this basis, SWOT was used to obtain the advantages of Guangzhou Tencent 's live broadcast business. However, it also had disadvantages such as single value-added services, high compliance standards, weak internal review. Then intro-duces the selection and implementation of competition strategy for the live broadcast business of Guangzhou Tencent Company.Finally, the paper summarizes the research results of the whole paper, points out the shortcomings in the research process, and puts forward the prospects for the future development strategy of the company's live broadcast business.

5G-MAG (Media Action Group) Reference Tools: Putting 5G in Action for Media

Content providers are increasingly using the internet to deliver content to users. Users can also enjoy this content on a wide variety of devices anywhere and at any time. The increasing consumption of high-quality mobile video over 5G networks is set to demand sophisticated and robust streaming service architectures and implementations ready to cope with traffic loads and meet the requirements and expectations of content owners. The ongoing standardization of 5G is an opportunity to provide the media industry with the right tools to operate the 5G media platform. With this in mind, 5G-MAG (Media Action Group) has kickstarted the 5G-MAG reference tools project to develop common open-source reference tools to support the implementation and interoperability of 5G media technologies. In this paper, we present the current architecture of the 5G-MAG reference tools implementing client components in the context of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) release 16 5G media streaming and 5G broadcast. Moreover, we provide detailed insights on the first two use cases “Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-based 5G Broadcast” and “broadband-broadcast seamless switching” and give an outlook on future work on use cases such as “targeted ad-insertion” and “regional content insertion.” We also show how the tools serve as a reference or integration platform for traditional broadcast networks and services including a DVB-I service layer or the alignment with the service layer of ATSC 3.0.

Design of a 5G Multimedia Broadcast Application Function Supporting Adaptive Error Recovery

The demand for mobile multimedia streaming services has been steadily growing in recent years. Mobile multimedia broadcasting addresses the shortage of radio resources but introduces a network error recovery problem. Retransmitting multimedia segments that are not correctly broadcast can cause service disruptions and increased service latency, affecting the quality of experience perceived by end users. With the advent of networking paradigms based on virtualization technologies, mobile networks have been enabled with more flexibility and agility to deploy innovative services that improve the utilization of available network resources. This paper discusses how mobile multimedia broadcast services can be designed to prevent service degradation by using the computing capabilities provided by multiaccess edge computing (MEC) platforms in the context of a 5G network architecture. An experimental platform has been developed to evaluate the feasibility of a MEC application to provide adaptive error recovery for multimedia broadcast services. The results of the experiments carried out show that the proposal provides a flexible mechanism that can be deployed at the network edge to lower the impact of transmission errors on latency and service disruptions.

A Transcoding Task Offloading and Routing Decision-Making Scheme in Live Transmission Architecture Based on Computing Power Network

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the demand for high-bit-rate live broadcast services, which has led to the widespread use of edge transcoding technology. Edge transcoding can effectively reduce the throughput of streaming media transmission, making it a popular and extensively researched technology. However, due to the real-time requirements of live broadcasting, the edge server needs to have the sufficient computing power to ensure low-latency calculations, which makes computing power allocation and traffic distribution become quite difficult. Inspired by the real-time and flexible computing power scheduling ability of the Computing Power Network, this paper explores reasonable edge task offloading and efficient traffic routing path planning to ensure overall low latency. This paper proposes a live stream transmission architecture based on the computing power network to solve the problems mentioned above to some degree. The paper first models the computing power network in the scene and then designs a task offloading algorithm based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DQN) to determine the device for executing the computing task. Furthermore, a hybrid Simulated Annealing Genetic Algorithm (SAGA) is proposed for routing decisions. The effectiveness and superiority of the scheme are validated through simulation experiments.

재난문자방송 송출의 중요도와 만족도에 관한 실증분석 연구

본 연구는 각종 재난으로부터 국민들의 건강과 안전을 지키기 위한 수단의 하나로 활용되고 있는 재난문자방송 제도의 개선사항을 도출하기 위한 것을 목적으로 하였다. 이를 위해 설문조사를 이용하여 재난문자방송 송출과 관련한 국민들의 인식도와 전반적인 만족도를 살펴보고, IPA 분석을 통해 재난문자방송의 개별 요소들에 대한 중요도와 만족도 분석을 실시함으로써 효율적인 개선방안을 도출하였다. 분석결과를 요약하면 다음과 같다. 첫째, 재난문자방송의 다양한 요인 중 긴급성, 신속성, 정확성 등은 비교적 중요한 요인이면서 국민들의 만족도가 높다. 그러나, 송출수단, 중복성, 취약계층지원, 송출기준 등에 대해서는 만족하지 못하고 있으며, 개선이 필요하다. 둘째, 재난문자시스템의 통합이 필요하다. 셋째, 안전취약계층을 위한 다양한 지원이 필요하다. 넷째, 재난유형별 맞춤형 재난문자방송 송출이 필요하다. 본 연구의 결과는 긴급재난문자 정책의 효율적 개선방안을 제시할 수 있다.

Assessment of Taiwan Public Warning Cell Broadcast Service: Insights from an Expert Focus Group and Citizens

This study examines how Taiwan's central government has implemented since 2013 the Public Warning Cell Broadcast Service (CBS), which was an innovative type of disaster public warning system. The study attempts to shed light on citizens’ assessment of CBS as well as gains insights from an expert focus group. Using the 2018 citizen satisfaction survey of the public alert and warning system, this study aims specifically to analyze the influence of information communication, information delivery frequency, quality of service, and age on citizens’ assessment of CBS in Taiwan. The results of this study have implications for CBS assessment intended to improve citizens’ experience of CBS use. In addition, the study draws upon the discussion among an expert focus group regarding risk knowledge, technical monitoring and warning service, dissemination and communication of warnings, and community response capability of CBS. Based upon the expert focus group discussion, this study identifies the main service advantages and challenges in the implementation process, so that future policy planners may draw lessons from the Taiwan experience.

Constructing Community Identity and Local Wisdom Content in Regional TV Stations Digital Broadcasting

This study analyzes Net TV Ambon and Indosiar Ambon as media that broadcast and show local content. The TV station show material with added value to explore the local wisdom, highlight cultural identity, and maintain its existence entering the digital broadcasting era. This study uses the qualitative approach and descriptive data as analysis methods. Data collection from research subjects was carried out using purposive sampling techniques. Primary data, namely the main data in the study, was conducted through in-depth interviews with informants, specifically KPID Maluku, KSP TV Indosiar Ambon, Liaison Officer Net TV Ambon, and local PH (Production House) in Ambon. Secondary data is obtained through reviewed impressions and various libraries from related sources. The results revealed that: 1) Net TV Ambon and Indosiar Ambon have the jargon "local wisdom and its existence in maintaining and preserving the culture of “The Basudara People”. 2) TV Net Ambon and Indosiar Ambon catch opportunities from the digitalization of broadcasting to expand and develop broadcast services for the public. The Net TV Ambon and Indosiar Ambon develop the distribution of local content and various information on local wisdom in the Maluku region that can be watched widely throughout Indonesia and even globally.

Reconciling editorial independence and public accountability issues in Public Broadcasting Service

A public broadcaster is pulled in two directions: There is the need to be accountable to the public,and the imperative to be editorially independent at the same time. The first implies parametersand control systems; the second points to the need for autonomy. This distinctive tension marksout a key difference between public and private broadcasting (through the public accountabilitycomponent), and between public and government-controlled broadcasting (through the editorialindependence proviso). Several dimensions can be identified in regard to assessing accountabilityand editorial independence, and also to the way that policy can work to integrate these twoapparently contradictory imperatives. In 2004, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)was required in effect to mediate the complex challenges in this tension by formulating detailededitorial policies and systems. The significance of the SABC experience also extends to understandingthe nature of policy more broadly

An adaptive and cooperative MAC protocol for safety applications in cognitive radio enabled vehicular Ad-hoc networks

Rapid broadcast of safety message (sm) is critical for real-time applications in cognitive radio vehicular ad hoc networks (CR-VANETs). The arrival of primary users (PU) and the relative unpredictability of traffic emerge as network bottleneck constraints, resulting in unreliable broadcast services. The requirement is for a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol that allows for fair contention, is adaptive, and includes a makeup strategy for rebroadcasting failed transmissions. There are intricate tradeoff optimisation relationships in which a value for the contention window that is inadequate will not result in optimal network performance. In this paper, we develop a dynamic contention window backoff mechanism using Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions that enhances network performance by modifying the backoff time according to traffic density. Then we amalgamate this algorithm with a cooperative makeup strategy to design a novel adaptive and cooperative MAC protocol that is operable in a dynamic CR-VANET paradigm (ACCRV-MAC). A Markov chain decision model characterises the protocol, and Network Simulator -2 analyses various performance parameters. The study reveals that ACCRV-MAC improves throughput by 38.3% and reduces network latency by 49% compared to existing MAC protocols.

Tagcaster: Activating Wireless Voice of Electronic Toll Collection Systems With Zero Start-Up Cost

This work enhances the machine-to-human communication between electronic toll collection (ETC) systems and drivers by providing an AM broadcast service to deployed ETC systems. This study is the first to show that ultra-high radio frequency identification signals can be received by an AM radio receiver due to the presence of the nonlinearity effect in the AM receiver. Such a phenomenon allows the development of a previously infeasible cross-technology and cross-frequency communication, called Tagcaster, which converts an ETC reader to an AM station for broadcasting short messages (e.g., charged-fees and traffic forecast) to drivers at tollbooths. The key innovation in this work is the engineering of Tagcaster over off-the-shelf ETC systems using shadow carrier and baseband whitening without the need for hardware nor firmware changes. This feature allows zero-cost rapid deployment in the existing ETC infrastructure. Two prototypes of Tagcaster are designed, implemented, and evaluated over four general and five vehicle-mounted AM receivers (e.g., Toyota, Audi, and Jetta). Experiments reveal that Tagcaster can provide good-quality (PESQ>2) and stable AM broadcasting service with a 30 m coverage range. Tagcaster remarkably improves user experience at ETC stations, and two-thirds of volunteer drivers rate it with a score of 4+ out of 5.

Robust Analog Beamforming for Periodic Broadcast V2V Communication

We generalize an existing low-cost analog signal processing concept that takes advantage of the periodicity of vehicle-to-vehicle broadcast service to the transmitter side. In particular, we propose to process multiple antennas using either an analog beamforming network (ABN) of phase shifters, or an antenna switching network (ASN) that periodically alternates between the available antennas, to transmit periodic messages to receivers that have an analog combining network (ACN) of phase shifters, which has been proposed in earlier work. To guarantee robustness, we aim to minimize the burst error probability for the worst receiving vehicular user, in a scenario of bad propagation condition that is modeled by a single dominant path between the communicating vehicles. In absence of any form of channel knowledge, we analytically derive the optimal parameters of both ABN and ASN. The ABN beamforming vector is found to be optimal for all users and not only for the worst receiving user. Further, we demonstrate that Alamouti scheme for the special case of two transmit antennas yields similar performance to ABN and ASN. At last, we show that the derived parameters of the two proposed transmission strategies are also optimal when hybrid ACN-maximal ratio combining is used at the receiver.

Dynamic MBSFN Beam Area Formation in 6G Multibeam Non-Terrestrial Networks

Providing innovative services and ensuring ubiquitous, ultrahigh-density, extreme-data-rate, and very low latency communications are essential for future sixth-generation systems, where the importance of non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) will incredibly rise. However, the management of both the capacity and the radio spectrum remains one of the main challenges, when a huge number of devices require access to dissimilar broadcast services at the same time. To cope with these issues, traditional single-beam satellite systems can be replaced with very high throughput satellite, where multibeam transmissions increase the capacity and improve the spectrum utilization while limiting interbeam interference. In this article, we propose a dynamic multicast/broadcast single-frequency network (MBSFN) beam area formation (D-MBAF) algorithm that dynamically groups beams into dedicated MBSFN beam areas (MBAs) to increase the aggregate data rate (ADR) of the multibeam NTN system and deliver a given video content to all the interested NTN terminals. D-MBAF leverages multicast subgrouping by clustering the NTN terminals into different MBAs that are simultaneously served with different data rates. Furthermore, the D-MBAF algorithm delivers the video content in different flows: the base layer with lower resolution and a set of enhancement layers with higher resolutions. Radio resources are efficiently allocated to avoid interference among the beams belonging to different MBAs. A simulation campaign is carried out under different scenarios to assess the effectiveness of the proposed D-MBAF algorithm in terms of mean throughput, ADR, resource block utilization, and number of sent layers. Obtained results confirm that the D-MBAF algorithm outperforms the single-frequency multibeam transmission and the multilayer video delivery schemes used as benchmarks.

The ‘conscience of duty’: The National Broadcasting Service of Portugal and the Spanish Civil War

During the Spanish Civil War, radio went from being a simple musical loudspeaker to being used as a combat weapon. Through radio broadcasts both sides confronted each other to persuade public opinion or to increase the morale of their troops and allies. In this context, Salazar’s Portugal, to legitimize the coup d’état in Spain, used all its diplomatic and media resources, among them the National Broadcasting Service (the Emissora Nacional; EN), which during the war came under the dictator’s cabinet. Simulating an apparent neutrality in its national broadcasts, the EN disseminated an intense propaganda against the Madrid government abroad. This work aims to delve into the less known aspects of EN during the conflict, such as the strategy of its international broadcasts or its collaboration with European anti-communist organizations in the service of General Franco’s interests.

Expansion of ATSC 3.0-Based Disaster Broadcasting Service for the Visually and Hearing Impaired

Disasters are now becoming commonplace and especially the vulnerable group such as the disabled, the elderly, children and foreigners are in a state of overlapping disasters. In this situation, ATSC 3.0-based UHDTV disaster information service for the visually and hearing impaired has been developing. This study focuses on the demand data collected through in-depth interview with the impaired. The demand analysis data is very important to development process of technology. The results of the interview show that it is essential to link the UHDTV disaster signals with home-network, IoT, wearable devices, and various assistive devices for the impaired (hearing aid, smart light bulbs, warning light, etc.). In outdoor space, UHDTV disaster information must be connected to public display media, digital signage, kiosk, screens in bus or taxi. If communication aids for the visually and hearing impaired are equipped with a function that can transmit and receive disaster information, it will help to minimize disaster damage.

Design of live broadcast service outsourcing contract considering risk aversion and financial constraints

AbstractAiming at the problem of double information asymmetry in live broadcast service outsourcing, firstly, using the principal‐agent theory, we design an incentive contract based on the live broadcast time and revenue sharing payment. Then, we further consider the risk aversion of the live broadcast company, and study the design of the live broadcast service outsourcing contract when the live broadcast company considers the risk of uncertain sales and has financial constraints. The optimal contract and its influencing factors under double information asymmetry are analyzed. Finally, the relevant conclusions are verified by numerical examples, and management implications are summarized.

Engaging Audiences Through Multi-Platform Television: Danger-5 and the Diamond Girls

This paper examines the production processes of an Australian television drama, focusing on webisodes produced as part of a multi-platform program Danger 5. This program was broadcast on the Special Broadcast Service (SBS), Australia, in two series (2012 and 2015). Levine’s (2007) modes of production are applied to the creation of the webisodes. Through set visits and nine interviews with key creative staff, this study examines how cultural factors shaped these ancillary texts. The SBS’s chartered purpose to use innovation to reach audiences was a key factor in the creation of these webisodes. The findings from this project include that the environment, routines, and practices in the creation of the webisodes were very similar to the broadcast Danger 5 program. However, this paper will demonstrate that shaping story for the webisodes and the efforts to reach an online audience meant that content changes were made. The more immediate feedback and clearer ability to measure audiences using social media were the reasons for a change in emphasis toward this form of online engagement during production in the program’s second season.

5G Evolution for Multicast and Broadcast Services in 3GPP Release 17

5G communications systems are on the evolution path with present focus on enabling advanced features and new service capabilities. Multicast and Broadcast Services (MBS) are being considered as one of the most promising use cases of 5G. As introduced to Release 17 of 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5G standards, MBS work item has been developed over existing 5G framework. MBS standardization is targeted to enhance 5G New Radio and 5G Core Network capabilities for serving reliable, low latency, resource efficient, and massively deployable multicast and broadcast services from both architectural and transmission perspectives. In this article, we present an introduction to MBS standardization and outline newly introduced technical features, and their use cases.

An Experimental Implementation of China Digital Radio (CDR) Broadcasting in Hubei

This paper presents the research and implementation of a China Digital Radio (CDR) experimental network in Hubei, China with two FM-CDR transmitting stations and four FM-band channels. To study the coverage discontinuity problem in a large service area, the experimental network employs an intelligent networking solution that incorporates multiple service channels carrying Broadcast and Data Services (BADS) and a Common-Regional-Information Channel (CRIC) carrying both service data and system information. The electronic service guide (ESG) carried by CRIC can inform the receivers about the available contents from current and adjacent stations, which can significantly improve the service quality in the overlapping areas, especially under mobile reception environment. Two RF tuners are used in the receiving terminals to access the CRIC, and the BADS channel, respectively. This paper first presents the frequency analysis and coverage tests of the experimental network, and then summarizes the coverage performances with different transmission parameter combinations. The goal is to gain experience in frequency planning, coverage prediction, as well as supportable services of CDR digital audio broadcasting.