Optimization of the physical layer signalling overhead of DVB-T2 and DVB-NGH

The robust transmission of sensitive signalling information on the physical layer is an important task in state-of-the-art transmission standards. Especially due to flexible scheduling concepts, which allow for the transmission of services with individual robustness, there is a need for extensive signalling information in order to acquire the payload data. For this purpose a sophisticated signalling concept with several signalling stages has been developed for DVB-T2 - the second generation terrestrial digital video broadcasting standard of the DVB Project. As current standards like DVB-T2 miss the theoretical Shannon limit by only some tenths of a dB, it is natural to optimize the overhead required for the signalling as well, which can otherwise consume several percents of the available capacity. Therefore, an optimized variant of the DVB-T2 signalling is proposed, significantly reducing the signalling overhead in typical scenarios. This variant was recently accepted for the upcoming DVB-NGH standard.