MOBILE DVB-T RECEPTION: QUALITY OF STREAMING OVER IP OF AUDIOVISUAL SERVICES

A. Bertella, M. Rossini, P. Sunna, L. Vignaroli

Rai - Centro Ricerche e Innovazione Tecnologica - Turin - Italy

DVB-T mobile reception has been evaluated through laboratory tests and field trials with different modulation schemes; among these the more robust one is QPSK, rate 1/2, Tg 1/32, FFT 2k, that provides the best performance in terms of C/N but the least bit-rate. In fact the channel capacity drops at 6 Mbps, usable only to transmit an MPEG-2 program with a near good quality. The number of available programmes in mobile reception, keeping the same robustness, could be increased transmitting several audio/video streams encoded at about 500 kbps in CIF format to obtain a good quality on small LCD display; in this case the audio/video stream would be encapsulated over IP, using the Multiprotocol Encapsulation, and transmitted on DBV-T. The paper describes the laboratory tests performed to verify the feasibility of using DVB-T to convey IP media services; a survey also has been carried out using a van to collect data regarding quality of service information and subjective comparison between MPEG-2 and IP-over-DVB-T reception.