Planning of Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting System: Prediction and Optimization of Radio Coverage

Nepal Subodh



Digital Terrestrial Television Broadcasting (DTTB) is the foundation of free-to-air TV access and widely used means of receiving a television signal. Every government, broadcaster, and other stakeholders should emphasize the planning of DTTB taking consideration of its unique social and economic opportunities. And this is more important for the countries still reliant on an analog TV. For efficient management of broadcasting service area as well as resource allocation, it is necessary to administer the use of network parameters, e.g., transmit power, frequency channels, and antenna patterns. This research presentation begins with a summary and definition of the DTTB System which is one of the popular television delivery mechanisms. It is followed by the introduction of some of the recent technologies related to the DTTB system which are associated with this research work. Then, it explains the two principal contributions of our research work to the DTTB field: 1) proposal of a methodology to predict and optimize the radio coverage due to a typical Multi-Frequency Network (MFN) based DTTB system implemented in regions or countries with complex geographies, 2) modification and application of the proposed methodology to predict the radio coverage due to Single Frequency Network (SFN) based DTTB system. Next, each component used in the methodology is described in detail. The result section in the presentation includes 1) qualitative and quantitative analysis of the signal strength due to the DTTB system in the service area (regions in Nepal), 2) optimization of some of the important network parameters like power, frequency, antenna gain/orientation with the maximized radio coverage, 3) analysis on the variation of spectrum usage to the overall transmit power of the network, 4) how the proposed methodology could be extended to be used to predict the radio coverage due to SFN based DTTB and some results of the radio coverage scenarios, 4) the analysis on how the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) window placement strategy affects the radio coverage due to an SFN, and 5) comparison of MFN with SFN in terms of radio coverage and data rate. Although our analysis and simulations are based on the MFN network in Nepal, the methodology presented in this work can be applied in any region with some alterations in geographical and meteorological parameters. Finally, the presentation ends with the important conclusions and possible future enhancements of this research work.