NGBT: Next-Generation Broadcast Television

Continued rapid technical advances.

By Wayne C. Luplow

FAMILY IMAGE IS PUBLIC DOMAIN, TEENS IS COURTESY OF CAN STOCK PHOTO/MONKEYBUSINESS

uring the last few decades, much of the developed world has moved from analog terrestrial broadcasting to digital broadcasting. While delivery of television services to the consumer occurs via many different media, this article is focused on the delivery of television services via terrestrial, over-the-air broadcasting. Actual deployment of digital television (DTV) receivers varies greatly around the world. Led by the United States,

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2011.2181898 Date of publication: 21 March 2012

the Republic of Korea, Western Europe, and Japan, work on DTV began in the early 1990s with the implementation and deployment beginning in earnest in the late 1990s. As an example, the U.S. Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standard was adopted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in late 1996 with large-scale deployment not beginning until 2000. Elimination of all full-power analog transmissions did not occur until 2009. Deployment in Korea, Western Europe, and Japan took place at a more or less comparable pace. Deployment of DTV systems has only recently begun in South America,
2162-2248/12/$31.002012 IEEE

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China, and the rest of North America. Deployment of DTV receivers and broadcast equipment is yet to begin in many other parts of the world. The benefits of DTV are numerous and well known: noise-free and interference-free reception, higher-resolution DTV (HDTV) pictures, surround sound, multiple programs in a single RF channel (multicasting), and lower-power transmitters for the same coverage and interoperability with other media and delivery systems.

Without trading off robustness for net-delivered bit rate (payload), current systems have defined/ limited data delivery capacity.
rate (payload), current systems have defined/limited data delivery capacity. The question is how can delivery of more data be accomplished?

WHY NGBT?
Since analog television served us well for more than five decades and DTV as we know it today is still in its infancy, why is there such interest in next-generation systems at this point of time? There are several motivational factors to consider: competition for use of limited spectrum by other businesses and services desire of broadcasters to deliver an ever increasing amount of data (classical television and other data services) to their audiences competition from, and perhaps compatibility with, the Internet continued rapid technological advances.

COMPETITION FROM PROGRAM/SERVICE PROVIDERS VIA THE INTERNET

Although delivery of video programs via the Internet is a one-to-one service, it is still a threat to the broadcasting community, and it becomes an even bigger threat if spectrum is taken from terrestrial broadcasting and reallocated to the cellular community. Broadcasters feel they can combat this with more efficient terrestrial delivery tools. On the other hand, with Internet capabilities being incorporated into many consumer television sets, there are increased business opportunities, albeit, also challenges, given the nearinstantaneous return path offered by the Internet to enhance advertising, enable polling, and secure purchase/payment. The question is how can this become a win-win situation for broadcasters and Internet operators?

SPECTRUM COMPETITION
The ubiquity of the Internet and the quest for wireless access for use by consumers on the go has put tremendous pressure on agencies that regulate spectrum to allocate more of the desirable UHF spectrum to entities such as wireless carriers. This could result in less total spectrum allocated to terrestrial broadcasting, potentially decreasing the number of unique channels in any given market or even resulting in some sort of spectrum sharing among competitive broadcasters in a given market. The thought (hope) is that substantially more efficient spectrum utilization can be obtained with more efficient channel-coding and source-coding technologies.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS
New technologies have developed much faster in the last two decades than during the lifetime of analog television, in the last half of the 20th century. Speed of processors, storage capabilities, greener solutions, new video/audio coding techniques, and exotic channel-coding/decoding techniques are all enabled by the ever-speedier improvement in semiconductor technologies.

DELIVERY OF MORE DATA

Because direct-broadcast satellite and cable delivery competitors often have considerably more bandwidth available than the broadcast community, terrestrial broadcasters want to deliver more content to the viewing public. This content could include newer types of programming, such as threedimensional TV (3DTV), and higher-resolution video (the Japan Broadcasting Corporations [NHKs] ultra high definition television or other still-to-be-developed features), that could drive sales of new-generation television receivers. Without trading off robustness for net-delivered bit
The U.S. Broadcast Technological Evolution

NGBT / ATSC 3.0 ATSC 2.0 0 Capability Fundamental Technology Shift

Mobile DTV Fixed DTV Now Time Portable and Handheld

Additional Services

Nonbackward Compatible

Substantial Benefits Required

FIGURE 1. ATSC terrestrial broadcast technological evolution.

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Coding Performance Projected H+V Spectral Efficiency Performance for NHK System

10 Link Spectral Efficiency (b/s/Hz)

6 VSB-MIMO STBC-LDC A /53 with LDPC NHK Super Hi-Vision (Separate Horizontal/Vertical Polarizations)

4 A /53

2 NHK Mobile SFBC 0 10 5 0 5 10 15 C/N (dB) 20 25 30 35

DVBT2, 64QAM, 32K FFT, GI:1/128, PP1 DVBT, QPSK, 8K FFT, GI:1/32 DVBT2, 256QAM, 32K FFT, GI:1/128, PP1 DVBT2, 16QAM, 32K FFT, GI:1/128, PP1 ISDBT, 16QAM, Mode 3, 8K FFT, GI:1/32 Shannon Limit DTMB, 16QAM, C3780, PN420 A /53 LTE Baseline CMMB, 16QAM, 4K FFT, GI:1/8 WiMAX, 16QAM, 2K FFT, GI:1/32 FLO TV, QPSK NHK Super Hi Vision (Separate H/V Fields) VSBMMO STBC-LDC

DVBT2, QPSK, 32K FFT, GI:1/128, PP1 DVBT, 16QAM, 8K FFT, GI:1/32 ISDBT, QPSK, Mode 3, 8K FFT, GI:1/32 DVBT, 64QAM, 8K FFT, GI:1/32 ISDBT, 64QAM, Mode 3, 8K FFT, GI:1/32 DTMB, QPSK, C3780, PN420 DTMB, 64QAM, C3780, PN420 A /153 Full Channel CMMB, QPSK, 4K FFT, GI:1/8 WiMAX, QPSK, 2K FFT, GI:1/32 WiMAX, 64QAM, 2K FFT, GI:1/32 FLO TV, 16QAM NHK Mobile SFBC A /53 with LDPC

FIGURE 2. Channel coding efficiency for various known systems versus carrier-to-noise ratio.

Where there are new technologies, there are always engineers who look for applications, fame, and/or fortune.

QUEST FOR A COMMON WORLD-WIDE TERRESTRIAL TELEVISION STANDARD

Our ever-shrinking world, with business and recreational travelers, drives interoperable standards and receiving equipment.
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Today this is obvious in the realm of mobile phoneswe expect our mobile phone to provide service, no matter where we take it. As the thirst for video in untethered handheld and portable receivers continues, recognizing that point-to-point cellular services are already being overloaded because of the large bit rate requirements, a universal (or at least interoperable) television service would be quite desirable.

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The Future of Broadcast Television (FobTV) is an organization that has been founded to explore the potential of common standards for future terrestrial broadcast television systems (www.fobtv.org). There was a formation meeting held in Shanghai in November 2011 that was attended by 250 technical leaders around the world. The organizations that formed FobTV are ATSC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Radio Canada, Communications Research Centre, Canada, Digital Video Broadcast Project (DVB), European Broadcast Union, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, National Association of Broadcasters, National Engineering Research Center of DTV, NHK, Public Broadcasting Service, Rede Globo, and the Brazilian Society of Television Engineers (SET). Although the goals of the group are still not finalized, here is a version being considered: 1) Develop future ecosystem models for terrestrial broadcasting taking into account business, regulatory, and technical environments. 2) Develop requirements for next-generation terrestrial broadcast systems. 3) Foster collaboration of DTV development laboratories. 4) Select major technologies to be used as the basis for new standards. 5) Request standardization of selected technologies (layers) by ATSC, DVB, and the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (Japan). Only time will tell what will develop from this organization, but it is clear that there are many technical, cultural, and business-related challenges to be considered. Examples of such challenges include: differing channelization schemes around the world, 68 MHz development of video compression at least twice as efficient as the current accepted norm, MPEG-4 development of a much more efficient channel-coding (modulation) scheme acceptance of intellectual property and the resultant licensing by all countries how to deploy any new technology where spectrum is already congested with existing DTV services the will to find a common denominator among countries, broadcasters, and technology providers. It will be very interesting to see how the above challenges unfold during the next five (or more) years.

The work of TG-3 does not require any new system to be backward compatible with the existing DTV or MDTV (stationary or mobile) emission standards or receivers.

WHAT IS ATSC DOING RELATIVE TO NGBT?

ATSC is chartered as an international standards development organization for broadcast television. Its television standards are the basis for DTV in North America, Korea, and elsewhere. ATSC has also developed the mobile DTV (MDTV) system for the United States, which is just at the beginning of the deployment stage. The ATSC evolution of terrestrial broadcast standards is depicted in Figure 1. Fixed and MDTV are already included in the ATSC standards. ATSC 2.0 is a suite of backward-compatible fea-

tures (such as internet interfacing) to be added in the near future. Several years ago, in anticipation of a next-generation terrestrial television system, ATSC launched a planning team to study what might be done. The report of that planning team is a public document (Planning Team 2 Report on Next Generation Broadcast TV), which may be found on the ATSC Web site, www.atsc.org, under the Standards heading. During the second half of 2011, ATSC created a special technology group, TG-3, to deal with the technical aspects of such a new system that could provide futuristic broadcast services. No timeline or goal for completion of such a standard has been established, but it is anticipated that a request for technical information for advanced video/audio and channel coding will be forthcoming. Mobile/pedestrian/handheld operation will be an integral part of any system developed. So as not to inhibit new/ creative ideas, the work of TG-3 does not require any new system to be backward compatible with the existing DTV or MDTV (stationary or mobile) emission standards or receivers. How to deploy such a system in the presence of existing more than 1,800 ATSC transmitters and hundreds of millions of DTV receivers is an exercise left to the future if and when such a new system design is achieved. The general thinking for what would be required to make such a paradigm shift is a minimum of two times improvement (relative to MPEG 4) in video coding efficiency and two times increase in data throughput (relative to the existing ATSC/8-vestigial sideband modulation system) with negligible deterioration in the coverage area. While such an increase in video coding seems feasible (High Efficiency Video Coding is already targeted for 2012), the potential for a large jump in channel coding efficiency seems limited. Figure 2 (from the ATSC report) depicts the efficiency of channel coding approaches relative to the theoretical Shannon limit. But perhaps some entirely new/revolutionary approach for terrestrial broadcasting is needed? Some possibilities might be geographical diversity, reconfigurable networks, and addressable/flexible modulation schemes. No matter how and when this process plays out, it will be interesting to watch.

Wayne C. Luplow is editor-in-chief emeritus of IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics and past chair of the ATSC Board of Directors.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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