A flexible and robust packet transport protocol for digital HDTV

A packet oriented transport protocol used in the recently proposed advanced digital television (ADTV) system for terrestrial HDTV broadcast is described. ADTV achieves robust HDTV delivery on terrestrial simulcast channels via MPEG video compressor, prioritization of MPEG data, and ATM-type cell-relay-type packet transport in conjunction with a two-tier physical transmission scheme. The three principal sublayers of the ADTV transport protocol, (1) a generic data-link/network level for addressing, priority support and error control, (2) an adaptation layer for service-specific error recovery, and (3) a video service level for higher-level resynchronization of the video decoder are discussed in terms of specific functions, impact on system performance, and hardware implementation factors. A proof-of-concept simulation model which incorporates transport encoding and decoding functionality is outlined, and performance evaluation results are given for illustrative transmission scenarios