DVB-SH ("Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite services to Handhelds") is a physical layer standard for delivering IP based media content and data to handheld terminals such as mobile phones or PDAs, based on a hybrid satellite/terrestrial

downlink In a telecommunications network, a link is a communication channel that connects two or more devices for the purpose of data transmission. The link may be a dedicated physical link or a virtual circuit that uses one or more physical links or shar ...

and for example a

GPRS General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G and 3G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Ins ...

uplink. The

DVB Project Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international open standards for digital television. DVB standards are maintained by the DVB Project, an international industry consortium, and are published by a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) o ...

published the DVB-SH standard in February 2007.dvb.org: DVB approves DVB-SH specification
The DVB-SH system was designed for frequencies below 3 GHz, supporting UHF band, L Band or S-band. It complements and improves the existing

DVB-H DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld) is one of three prevalent mobile TV formats. It is a technical specification for bringing broadcast services to mobile handsets. DVB-H was formally adopted as ETSI standard EN 302 304 in November 2 ...

physical layer standard. Like its sister specification (DVB-H), it is based on DVB IP Datacast (IPDC) delivery, electronic service guides and service purchase and protection standards.

Standard description

Architecture

There are two physical layers (terrestrial and satellite), what increases de system configuration options. Depending on the transmitted signal modulation we can find two kind of architectures: SH-A and SH-B.

SH-A Architecture

Both terrestrial and satellite layers use Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (

OFDM In telecommunications, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a type of digital transmission and a method of encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies. OFDM has developed into a popular scheme for wideband digital commu ...

) this modulation solves the multipath problem, where the same token can be received multiple times with a delay due to bounces. Use OFDM in both transmitters enables creating single-frequency networks ( SFN), that increases spectral efficiency but forces the terrestrial signal being identical to the transmitted by the satellite. For this reason, is permitted to implement Multi-frequency network ( MFN) where terrestrial and satellite components can broadcast through different channels with the same modulation.

SH-B Architecture

Terrestrial component uses

but satellite uses Time-division multiplexing ( TDM). Both components have to broadcast in different frequencies to avoid interference. It is not possible creating SFN but increases satellite´s signal transmission performance because TDM works better with these kinds of transmissions.

Comparison with DVB-H

The DVB-SH incorporates a number of enhancements when compared to DVB-H: *More alternative coding rates are available *The omission of the 64QAM modulation scheme *The inclusion of support for 1.7 MHz bandwidth and 1k FFT *FEC using Turbo coding *Improved time interleaving *Support for antenna diversity in terminals Recently, results from BMCO forum
Alcatel April 2008
shows a radio improvement of at least 5.5 dB on signal requirements between DVB-H and DVB-SH in the UHF frequencies. The improvements to signal requirements translates to better in-building penetration, better in-car coverage and extension of outdoor coverage. DVB-SH chipsets are being developed now by DiBcom and

NXP Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in 2 ...

, and are expected to be available in beginning of 2008. Initial specifications show that the chipsets supports both UHF and S-Band and are compatible with DVB-H. DiBcom has announced a DVB-SH chip with availability in 2008 Q3
Dibcom DVB-SH 2008 Q3
The chip "has dual RF tuners supporting VHF, UHF, L-Band and S-Band frequencies".

Project organization

French

Agence de l'innovation industrielle The Agence de l'innovation industrielle was a French governmental agency created in 2005 to support technological projects. As of 2006, it was supporting seven projects: *BioHub, a chemistry projects to create products with cereals, without using ...

is now financing this effort through

TVMSL TVMSL (''TéléVision Mobile Sans Limite'') is a project led by Alcatel that plans to develop a DVB-H standard suitable for hybrid satellite and terrestrial transmission. Other partners involved in TVMSL are Sagem, Alenia, RFS, Philips, DiBc ...

, a project led by

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...

that plans to develop a DVB-SH standard suitable for hybrid satellite and terrestrial transmission. Other partners involved in TVMSL are Sagem Wireless, Alenia, RFS,

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

, DiBcom, TeamCast,

UDcast UDcast was a company that provided products for Internet Protocol (IP) over broadcast media. It developed technology for IP networks over satellite and servers to provide television on mobile networks. History UDcast was involved in internationa ...

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...

, CEA-LETI.

Satellites

ICO is an action-adventure game developed by Japan Studio and Team Ico, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, released for the PlayStation 2 video game console in 2001 and 2002 in various regions. It was designed and directed by Fumito Ued ...

, one of the biggest satellite operators in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, in 2007 announced a nationwide deployment of an hybrid satellite/terrestrial network in DVB-SH with

and Expway. ICO G1 satellite carrying DVB-SH technology on board was launched on April 14, 2008. It is the world's first DVB-SH satellite in orbit.

Eutelsat Eutelsat S.A. is a French satellite operator. Providing coverage over the entire European continent, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Americas, it is the world's third-largest satellite operator in terms of revenues. Eutelsat's satellite ...

W2A satellite carrying a

Solaris Mobile EchoStar Mobile, an Irish company with commercial operations headquartered in the United Kingdom and a data centre based in Griesheim, Germany, is a mobile operator that provides connectivity across Europe through a converged satellite and terrest ...

and SES

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

, now

EchoStar Mobile EchoStar Mobile, an Irish company with commercial operations headquartered in the United Kingdom and a data centre based in Griesheim, Germany, is a mobile operator that provides connectivity across Europe through a converged satellite and terrest ...

) DVB-SH

S band The S band is a designation by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). Thus it crosses the conventi ...

payload was launched on 3 April 2009. It will cover Western Europe. S-band payload was scheduled to enter into service in May 2009 but this did not occur due to an anomaly currently being investigated. On 1 July 2009, Solaris Mobile filed the insurance claim. The technical findings indicate that the company should be able to offer some, but not all of the services it was planning to offer. Inmarsat's

satellite programme, called EuropaSat, will deliver mobile multimedia broadcast, mobile two-way broadband telecommunications and next-generation MSS services across all member states of the European Union and as far east as Moscow and Ankara by means of a hybrid satellite/terrestrial network. It will be built by

Thales Alenia Space Thales Alenia Space () is a Franco-Italian aerospace manufacturer. A joint venture between the French technology corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian defense conglomerate Leonardo (33%), the company is the largest satellite manufactur ...

and launched in early 2011 by ILS.

Trials

DVB-H/SH trials are now underway in many cities and countries:

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo's East Mal ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

Bern german: Berner(in)french: Bernois(e) it, bernese , neighboring_municipalities = Bremgarten bei Bern, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kirchlindach, Köniz, Mühleberg, Muri bei Bern, Neuenegg, Ostermundigen, Wohlen bei Bern, Zollikofen , website ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...

Erlangen Erlangen (; East Franconian: ''Erlang'', Bavarian: ''Erlanga'') is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt (former administrative district Erlangen), and with 116,062 inha ...

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, Roeselare, and

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area, the List of countries and dependencies by population, second-most populous ...

. DVB-SH in S-band is seen as an alternative in Europe. Recent field trials and studies showed better performance in radio than DVB-H standard that would lead to much lower costs for network deployments. In

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

again,

SFR SFR (; ''Société française du radiotéléphone'', ) is a French telecommunications company. As of December 2015, it had 21.9 million customers in Metropolitan France for mobile services, and provided 6.35 million households with high-spee ...

and

teamed up to deploy a DVB-SH trial. The results confirmed the theoretical assumptions on the superiority of the DVB-SH over DVB-H, being the natural evolution of this legacy technology. In

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, 3 Italia,

RAI RAI – Radiotelevisione italiana (; commercially styled as Rai since 2000; known until 1954 as Radio Audizioni Italiane) is the national public broadcasting company of Italy, owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. RAI operates many ter ...

and

joined forces for the first DVB-SH trial in Italy. In

Dish Network DISH Network Corporation (DISH, an acronym for DIgital Sky Highway) is an American television provider and the owner of the direct-broadcast satellite provider Dish, commonly known as Dish Network, and the over-the-top IPTV service, Sling ...

and

joined forces for the first DVB-SH trial in US.DISH Network Corporation and Alcatel-Lucent to Perform Joint DVB-SH Test in the U.S
/ref>

References

External links

DVB-SH standardization history, performance evaluation, research papers on DVB-SH system, DVB-SH trials and other scientific contributions

DVB Project

DVB-H.org

DVB-SH: Mobile digital TV in S-Band (EBU Technical Review article)
*
Alcatel April 2008

April 2008 in Italian

Echostar Mobile

Eutelsat

ICO

AT&T CruiseCast
{{Satcomm Digital Video Broadcasting Broadcast engineering Mobile telephone broadcasting Satellite broadcasting