Nov 20 2008
What is DVB-T?
DVB-T is an abbreviation for Digital Video Broadcasting —– Terrestrial; it is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television. This system transmits compressed digital audio, video and other data in an MPEG transport stream, using COFDM modulation.
Rather than carrying the data on a single radio frequency carrier, OFDM works by splitting the digital data stream into a large number of slower digital streams, each of which digitally modulate a set of closely spaced adjacent carrier frequencies. In the case of DVB-T, there are two choices for the number of carriers known as 2K-mode or 8K-mode. These are actually 1705 or 6817 carriers that are approximately 4 kHz or 1 kHz apart.
DVB-T offers three different modulation schemes (QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM).
DVB-T has been adopted or proposed for digital television broadcasting by many countries (see map), using mainly VHF 7 MHz and UHF 8 MHz channels whereas Taiwan uses 6 MHz channels. Examples include the UK’s Freeview.
The DVB-T Standard is published as EN 300 744, Framing structure, channel coding and modulation for digital terrestrial television. This is available from the ETSI website, as is ETSI TS 101 154, Specification for the use of Video and Audio Coding in Broadcasting Applications based on the MPEG-2 Transport Stream, which gives details of the DVB use of source coding methods for MPEG-2 and, more recently, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC as well as audio encoding systems. Many countries that have adopted DVB-T have published standards for their implementation. These include the D-Book in the UK, the Italian DGTVi [1], the ETSI E-Book and Scandivia NorDig.
DVB-T has been further developed into newer standards such as DVB-H (Handheld), now in operation, and DVB-T2, which was recently finalised.
DVB-T as a digital transmission delivers data in a series of discrete blocks at the symbol rate. DVB-T is a COFDM transmission technique which includes the use of a Guard Interval. It allows the receiver to cope with strong multipath situations. Within a geographical area, DVB-T also allows single-frequency network (SFN) operation, where two or more transmitters carrying the same data operating on the same frequency. In such cases the signals from each transmitter in the SFN needs to be accurately time-aligned, which is done by a sync information in the stream and timing at each transmitter referenced to GPS.
The length of the Guard Interval can be chosen. It is a trade off between data rate and SFN capability. The longer the guard interval the larger is the potential SFN area without creating Inter Symbol Interference (ISI). It can be possible to operate SFNs which do not fulfil the guard interval condition if the self interference is properly planned and monitored.
Countries and territories using DVB-T
- Countries and territories using DVB_T
2 responses so far
[...] DVB-T [...]
[...] what you are playing from time to time, which of course is a great nuisance. TV Turner: Built-in DVB-T: DVB-T is an abbreviation for Digital Video Broadcasting–Terrestrial. Notice that DVB-T is [...]