Experimental performance of mobile DVB-T2 in SFN and distributed MISO network

Abstract

Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld (DVB-H) and Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB) are the most known standards that enable digital television transmissions to handheld or mobile receivers in Europe. The emerging DVB-T2 standard enables a network based on frequency diversity coding (called Alamouti Space-Frequency coding) suitable for multipath propagation environments which presents better performances for fixed reception compared to SFN (Single Frequency Network). In this paper, we present detailed experimental performance results of classical mobile channel (TU6) for DVB-T2. These evaluations are given for different Doppler frequencies in a classical SFN (Single Frequency Network) compared to distributed MISO. Laboratory and field measurements are presented. With the receiver used for our experiments, the results show clearly the quality degradation of received signals for distributed MISO compared to classic SFN. These results are useful for the study and the determination of the current mobile performance of DVB-T2 and network design and may also be useful for upcoming standards such as DVB-NGH (Next Generation Handheld).