[opendtv] Is LTE in Broadcast's Future?

  • From: Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2011 04:46:10 -0500

I don't agree with Doug's comparions of HSDPA (WCDMA) vs LTE, either in terms 
of spectral efficiency (which is in fact identical if you use MIMO and the same 
channel widths in both cases) or in terms of immunity from multipath. I think 
that comparing CDMA with 8-VSB, in terms of multipath performance, just because 
CDMA is a single carrier scheme, is very misleading.
 
Bert
 
---------------------------
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/114486
 
Is LTE in Broadcast's Future?
by Doug Lung, 03.01.2011.
 
If you're in the market for a new smartphone or wireless broadband device, 
you've probably seen the term "LTE" in conjunction new high speed "4G" 
offerings from Verizon. The current LTE release does not meet the ITU 
definition of 4G, but advanced LTE releases will. LTE is being deployed by 
companies like Verizon on what used to be TV broadcast channels 52-–69 and will 
also be used at 1.6 GHz in LightSquared's hybrid satellite/terrestrial network. 
This month I'll provide a brief explanation of LTE and also look at the 
multicast (broadcast) capability included in the standard. Could it replace 
ATSC at some point in the future?
 
WHAT IS LTE?
 
LTE is an acronym for "Long Term Evolution." It is a 3GPP standard providing, 
in the current release, uplink speeds of up to 50 Mbps and downlink speeds of 
up to 100 Mbps in a 20 MHz channel. At the physical layer, it uses Orthogonal 
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Multiple Input Multiple Output 
(MIMO) transmission. While OFDM has been used for many years for WiFi and 
broadcasting (DVB-T and DVB-H plus variations such as FLO), this is the first 
use, as far as I know, of OFDM for cellular networks. Prior to LTE, cellular 
standards were based on single carrier transmission, just as ATSC is today.
 
After building out single carrier cellular networks, why would wireless 
companies change to LTE? The advantages include downlink spectrum efficiency 3 
to 4 times that of HSDPA (one of the most efficient single carrier methods), 
lower latency (under 10 ms. after the link is established), scalable bandwidths 
(1.25, 2.5, 5.0, 10.0 and 20 MHz), and support for MIMO configurations up to 4 
x 2 in the downlink mode. The standard also supports M-SFN and repeaters. LTE 
repeaters can operate in an "on-frequency" mode when there is sufficient 
receive/transmit antenna isolation or use a time offset between the received 
and transmitted packets when needed to reduce self interference.
 
Readers who followed the COFDM versus 8-VSB debate will also remember that OFDM 
is less susceptible to multipath interference as long as it is within the guard 
interval. MIMO minimizes the impact of frequency selective fading. However, as 
you may remember from that debate, OFDM has its disadvantages, the main one 
being a much higher peak-to-average ratio, which reduces RF amplifier 
efficiency. Indeed, LTE uses Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access 
(SC-FDMA) for the uplink to reduce amplifier power demands in user handsets and 
devices.

Verizon and AT&T both recently announced plans to use some of their spectrum 
for broadband multicasting (broadcasting is the old-fashioned term for it) to 
reduce the load (one stream per user) video streaming is placing on their 
unicast IP networks. It isn't surprising that LTE includes provision for 
broadcasting. LTE Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) can operate in 
either a single-cell mode using the downlink shared channel (DL-SCH) or in a 
multi-cell mode where transmissions from cells are synchronized to form a 
Multicast/Broadcast—Single Frequency Network (MB-SFN). While the LTE standard 
specifies full performance at distances up to 5 km per cell, it suffers only 
slight degradation from 5 km to 30 km and should support operation up to 100 
km. Obviously these distances are a bit short for single stick broadcasting. 
More study is needed, but at first glance it appears to me that fewer 
transmitters would be needed than with an ATSC-based distributed transmission 
system.

This workflow chart illustrates the concept of "Universal Broadband 
Broadcasting." Source: Mark Aitken, director of advanced technology, Sinclair 
Broadcast Group

NEXT-GEN ATSC STANDARD?
 
It isn't surprising that a rough plan for using LTE for broadcasting by TV 
stations has already been presented to the FCC. Mark Aitken, Sinclair Broadcast 
Group's Director of Advanced Technology presented an outline of next generation 
broadcasting using LTE in a meeting with FCC staff from the Office of 
Engineering and Technology and the Media Bureau. The presentation, which is 
available on the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS), calls the 
technology "ATSC-EV." The system would be based on OFDM and incorporate the LTE 
multicast options discussed earlier but is presented separately from the LTE 
MBMS format.
 
Could it work? LTE offers 100 Mbps downlink speeds in a 20 MHz wide channel 
before subtracting bandwidth for error correction, signaling and other 
housekeeping functions, The presentation shows ATSC-EV (Next Gen) offering 154 
Mbps raw (before subtracting error correction and signaling) data bamdwidth. 
Since new demodulators would be required for ATSC-EV, it would make sense to 
switch to a more efficient video codec. However, the presentation shows that 14 
channels would be able to provide 330 Mbps (using DVB-T2 parameters from the 
UK) for fixed service only. Even if the 19.39 Mbps data bandwidth per station 
is retained, 17 stations would be able to fit into the same spectrum (including 
guard bands) where 14 stations are now.
 
Whether or not ATSC-EV is the ultimate solution, it seems clear that TV 
broadcasting has to be given the regulatory opportunity to modify its 
transmission technology to keep up with other industries if broadcasting is 
going to survive. Figuring out how to get there from here without 
disenfranchising a large number of viewers is the tough part. Sinclair received 
help from engineers at Rohde and Schwarz and SES World Skies in its FCC 
presentation.
 
Comments are welcome! E-mail me at dlung@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
                                           
 
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