A Multi-Burst Sliding Encoding for Mobile Satellite TV Broadcasting

Protection of data against long fading time is one of the greatest challenges posed by a satellite delivery system offering multimedia services to mobile devices like DVB-SH. To deal with this challenge several enhancements and modifications of the existing terrestrial mobile TV (DVB-H) are being considered. These solutions provide the required protection depth but they don´t take into account the specificity of mobile handheld devices such as power consumption, memory constraints and chipsets implementation costs. In this paper, we propose an innovative algorithm (called Multi Burst Sliding Encoding or MBSE) that extends the DVB-H intra-burst (MPE-FEC) protection to an inter-burst protection so that complete burst losses could be recovered while taking into account the specificity of mobile handheld devices. Based on a clever organisation of the data, our algorithm allows to provide protection against long term fading while still using RS code implemented in DVB-H chipsets. We evaluate the performance of MBSE by both theoretical analysis as well as intensive simulations and experiments. The results also show good performance in terms of protection, battery and memory saving. The MBSE is now under standardisation and it is considered by the DVB Forum as the main solution for the DVB-SH class terminals.