The latest research on Mobile TV Power Consumption that I have read
(Jan. 2007 by Signals Research Group) pegs consumption in mobile devices as:
LCD and back lighting - 70-75%
Broadcast Receiver - 10-15%
Media Player - 10-15%
While every little bit helps, I would dare say that the consumption
issue of display is the biggest mobile handheld hurdle...as well as
(obviously) battery advances...
Mark
Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
> The power draw of fast CMOS chips is a problem that has been addressed
> for several years, and continues to be. So, just like those pessimistic
> assessments of power-hungry ATSC demods have been gradually proven to be
> ancient history, the same is happening to DVB-T receivers. And this
> means that the role of DVB-H starts to become questionable. The more
> time passes, the more such time-sliced schemes will be unnecessary for
> power savings.
>
> I'm all in favor of these trends, just as I've always been more in favor
> of improving reception of the basic 8T-VSB, making optimal use of what's
> already there (and adding a diversity antenna system), as opposed to
> layering on additional coding for a special-purpose stream.
>
> So: if DVB-T to battery operated portables becomes feasible, the same
> will be true for 8T-VSB. That's my prediction. And to me, duplicating
> this "radio model," where portable and fixed devices share the same
> signal, holds the most promise long term. *Certainly* from a consumer's
> point of view, if not from the point of view of someone trying to carve
> out a separate niche subscription market.
>
> Bert
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Shifting technology roils mobile TV
> DVB-T's portable play may obsolete DVB-H
>
> Junko Yoshida and Dylan McGrath
> (01/29/2007 9:00 AM EST)
> URL: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197000909
>
> MANHASSET, N.Y. - What would happen if a specification designed to unify
> an emerging market became obsolete just as the market jelled?
>
> For DVB-H, rushed into development in 2004 to accommodate the low-power
> requirements of mobile television, the question may not be hypothetical.
>
> While the mobile-TV market in the West has developed at a snail's pace,
> semiconductor process technology has advanced so rapidly that DVB-T, a
> terrestrial DTV standard that had been thought too power-hungry for
> mobile TV, can now easily deliver TV broadcast to battery-operated
> portable devices. In the view of some, that may negate the need for
> DVB-H.
>
> The prospect that DVB-T may eclipse the handheld-specific variant for
> bringing mobile TV to portable devices--though not quite yet to cell
> phones--has some DVB-H chip vendors repurposing their products and
> shifting their targets for end-system and geographical markets.
>
> A case in point is Freescale Semiconductor Inc., which had thrown its
> weight behind DVB-H but now is pitching a low-power DVB-T tuner for
> portable media players. DVB-T power consumption has dropped to the point
> where users can safely watch extended TV programs on a portable player
> supporting the older format, said Berardino Baratta, general manager of
> Freescale's multimedia applications division.
>
> Likewise, DiBcom, a leading DVB-H demodulation chip maker, has
> cultivated a volume market, but not for DVB-H on cell phones. Rather,
> the company has built a business in DVB-T and DVB-T/DVB-H combo
> solutions for automotive and notebook PCs. DiBcom CEO Yannick Levy said
> the industry has sold 4 million DVB-T receiver dongles over the past two
> years in Europe alone, and DiBcom claims to have made the bulk of those
> sales.
>
> Vendors are also shifting geographical focus for their mobile-TV
> products.
>
> Analog Devices Inc., which has yet to achieve a sizable DVB-H deployment
> globally, is leveraging a demodulator developed for DVB-H to target
> China's GB-2006 terrestrial DTV standard (formerly called DMB-T/H).
>
> South Korea, Japan and China are "the three largest mobile-TV markets
> today," said David Robertson, product line director for ADI's high-speed
> converter group. The company is focusing on China and has opened a joint
> lab with Legend Silicon for developing GB-2006 mobile solutions,
> Robertson said.
>
> Microtune Inc. Is also pursuing a multistandard strategy for mobile TV,
> focusing on DVB-H and South Korea's T-DMB standard. It has scored a
> design win for a DVB-H tuner in LG handsets sold in Italy, and it
> considers China's mobile-TV market "a hot area," said Phil Spruce,
> mobile-TV product-marketing manager. But Spruce added that the final
> verdict on China's mobile-TV standard is "still not concrete."
>
> Process advancements are driving the rethinking of DTV standards.
> DiBcom's Levy said he had anticipated the current dilemma when the DVB
> group launched DVB-H in 2004. Levy started his company in 2000 to
> develop a DVB-T demodulator equipped with diversity implementations and
> Doppler effect compensations. In his view, DiBcom had already solved the
> DVB-T's mobility issues, and he was confident Moore's Law would reduce
> DVB-T's power appetite to palatable levels.
>
> Upstaging DVB-H
>
> The DVB Group, however, was convinced that DVB-T would falter for mobile
> apps and thus pursued DVB-H. The group achieved the handheld spec by
> integrating such techniques as time slicing (in which bursts of data are
> received periodically, allowing the receiver to power off when not
> active) and additional forward error correction.
>
> Three years ago, the combination of an orthogonal frequency division
> multiplexing (OFDM) baseband processor, built on a 0.18-micron process,
> and a canned RF tuner for DVB-T consumed 1.5 watts, according to
> DiBcom's Levy. Today, the pairing of a DVB-T silicon tuner and an OFDM
> demodulator built on a 90-nanometer process consumes only 350 mW.
>
> Although the time-slicing feature of DVB-H can cut its power drain to 30
> to 40 mW--a tenth of what DVB-T can offer today--DVB-T's 350 mW "isn't
> that bad," said Levy. South Korea's widely deployed T-DMB consumes 250
> mW.
>
> Another potential allure of DVB-T--indeed, of terrestrial DTV standards
> in general--is its free-over-the-air content. "If there is stuff to
> watch, there is a better chance that consumers will buy mobile-TV
> handsets. That means we can sell more chips into handsets," said ADI's
> Robertson.
>
> In South Korea's booming mobile-TV market, terrestrial mobile-TV content
> is available free. Three of the six T-DMB service providers in Korea are
> subsidiaries of free-to-air terrestrial DTV broadcasters (broadcasts are
> based on the Advanced Television Systems Committee standard).
>
> Mobile-TV content is also free in Japan. Japan has embraced a simulcast
> model, ISDB-T, under which terrestrial digital-TV broadcast transmits
> QVGA signals for mobile-TV reception in addition to its main broadcast
> in SD and HD signals.
>
> The United Kingdom, Germany and France are among the European countries
> in the process of rolling out DVB-T-based free-to-air digital TV. But
> none thus far employs DVB-T for mobile broadcast.
>
> Even in the United States, mobile versions of the ATSC-based terrestrial
> digital-TV system are emerging. At the Consumer Electronics Show,
> Samsung Electronics ran a demonstration trial of its Advanced-VSB mobile
> DTV technology. A-VSB (vestigial sideband) lets broadcasters transmit a
> mobile digital-TV signal on the same frequency used for standard
> television broadcasting. Although A-VSB at this point is a
> yet-to-be-ratified proposal bankrolled by Samsung, it is piquing
> interest in the repurposing of the free-to-air terrestrial digital
> standard.
>
> The United States is currently the most fragmented mobile-TV
> battleground, with several service providers--armed with different
> technologies and infrastructure--fighting over turf (see story, page
> 14). Freescale's Baratta said "the carrier play" is hobbling mobile-TV
> technologies like DVB-H.
>
> European picture
>
> Even in Europe, he said, the brighter prospect may be mobile TV based on
> DVB-T, delivered by free-over-the-air broadcasters, rather than DVB-H,
> whose broadcast and distribution requires collaboration with wireless
> carriers.
>
> But "not so fast," warned DiBcom's Levy, noting that technical
> implementations differ among the countries offering DVB-T-based free DTV
> broadcast. The United Kingdom, which launched DVB-T in 1997, is still
> using lower-power transmitters, and the "lower signal strength will
> become the main problem for portable reception," Levy said.
>
> The United Kingdom's use of legacy 2k mode instead of 8k mode for OFDM
> is another issue that works against DVB-T's use for mobile reception in
> that country. "I'd have to say good luck to that," Levy said. (In OFDM
> transmission, thousands of carrier frequencies, referred to as
> subcarriers, are transmitted in parallel. The 2k mode uses 1,705
> subcarriers; the 8k mode uses 6,817.)
>
> Germany could be a better candidate for mobile DVB-T deployment because
> its infrastructure supports stronger transmission signals. Still, he
> added, the heart of the issue is coverage. Signal reception patterns
> vary from city to city, depending on the location of the DVB-T
> transmission tower. Thus broadcasters must shell out additional
> investment in infrastructure--such as gap fillers--to enable mobile TV
> for both outdoor and indoor reception.
>
> Which road to profit?
>
> It remains unclear whether any free-to-air broadcasters are willing to
> invest further in network infrastructure for mobile TV. While starting
> with DVB-T and gradually phasing in DVB-H is a possible scenario, "I am
> not seeing that yet," said Levy.
>
> DVB-H stands a better chance of wide deployment for mobile TV simply
> because it is optimized for mobility, said Yoram Solomon, senior
> director of strategic marketing and industry relations for Texas
> Instruments Inc.'s mobile connectivity solutions group.
>
> Solomon also suggested that DVB-H and DVB-T, promoted by the same DVB
> group, have too much in common to be considered competing technologies.
>
> Kees Joosse, senior director of business development for NXP
> Semiconductors (Eindhoven, Netherlands), acknowledged that the technical
> hurdles to DVB-T's mobile deployment are being overcome but questioned
> the business model. Because DVB-T is a free-to-air standard, cellular
> operators have no financial incentive to push (or subsidize) handset
> makers to add DVB-T receivers, Joosse said. DVB-H, by contrast, can be a
> revenue generator for cellular operators.
>
> But many chip vendors no longer consider cell phones the holy grail for
> mobile TV. Increasingly, portable media players and PDAs are
> digital-video-enabled. "Those products that sit between a laptop
> computer and a cell phone simply didn't exist four years ago," said
> ADI's Robertson.
>
> Such products come with bigger color screens, QVGA resolution and--most
> important--bigger batteries than cell phones, "making it easier to
> receive fixed TV signals," he added.
>
> All material on this site Copyright 2007 CMP Media LLC. All rights
> reserved.
>
>
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><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><> ><>
Regards,
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Director, Advanced Technology
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