Optimizing Broadcast Spectrum through the Planning of Digital Television Network

Abstract

The transition from analogue to digital television promises an enormous digital dividend that can translate to spectrum resource provision for other services. In this work, the size of the spectrum that can be released as dividend after digital switchover in some selected States of Nigeria is estimated. First, the present analogue television (ATV) network coverage is compared with predicted digital terrestrial television (DTTV) network coverage during a simulcast period, and after ATV switch-off. The predicted DTTV network is initially planned with a multi-frequency network (MFN) and analysis showed that DTTV had a 12.5% improvement in spectrum utilization compared to ATV while achieving a better coverage probability of 95.3%. This work predicted further spectrum savings with the use of a single-frequency network (SFN) design for DTTV network planning. The analysis done showed that 87.5% of the ATV spectrum could be saved for other services after the transition to DTTV using SFN. Keywords: Digital television, SFN, MFN, Spectrum, dividend