By Michael Flath
Senior Staff Engineer
Tuner Devices
Infineon Technologies AG
E-mail: michael.flath@infineon.com
There are at least seven exist-
ing and emerging mobile TV
standards (Table 1), excluding
the cellular standards Multime-
dia Broadcast/Multicast Services
(MBMS) and Broadcast/Multicast
Services (BCMCS).
DVB-H builds on its backward-
compatibility with DVB-T, which
allows DVB-H transmission on
existing DVB-T channels. Signifi-
cant additions to DVB-H are the
4k FET mode, in-depth interleav-
ing for 2k and 4k OFDM, another
forward error correction layer for
multiprotocol encapsulated data
(MPE-FEC) and time-slicing to
save power. Commercial service
has started in Italy and more are
planned in other countries in
2007 and 2008.
Forward Link Only (FLO) tech-
nology, on which MediaFLO is
based, was developed by Qual-
comm and is planned to be used
in North America. Similar to DVB-H,
FLO minimizes power consump-
tion through time-slicing.
Terrestrial Digital Multimedia
Broadcasting (T-DMB), which
was developed and introduced
in South Korea, is based on the
Eureka 147 DAB standard. The
Korean mobile satellite system
S-DMB is one of few systems not
based on OFDM; instead it uses
code division multiplexing (CDM)
operating at 25MHz wide S-Band
channel.
Japan started providing mo-
bile TV based on ISDB-T in 2006.
The standard has one segment of
a 6MHz channel being used for
mobile applications.
China recently released its
own standard for mobile broad-
cast called China Multimedia
Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB).
A key component of CMMB is
Satellite Terrestrial Interactive
Multiservice Infrastructure (STiMi),
an OFDM-based PHY. China also
announced the adoption of
Digital Multimedia Broadcast Ter-
restrial/Handheld (DMB-TH) DTV
standard, which can be used for
handhelds.
Last February, the DVB Steer-
ing Committee approved the
Satellite Services to Handhelds
(DVB-SH) specification. DVB-SH
is designed to deliver services to
mobile devices via a hybrid sat-
ellite-and-terrestri