A comparison between theoretical and practical planning approaches for DVB-T2 single frequency networks

This paper presents a comparison between two planning approaches to DVB-T2 Single Frequency Networks (SFN). The first technique is regarded as theoretical and it is based on theoretical hexagonal lattices, where terrain impact is disregarded, the transmitting power and equivalent height are constant parameters over the entire service area. The second one is based on the use of commercial network planning tools that include all the terrain, population, network infrastructure databases as well as propagation related parameters. The paper highlights the motivation for each one of the planning procedures and presents a comparison between them using the planning example of a wide service area in the south of Germany. In general, the hexagon model is able to describe some broad network characteristics but fails to describe the coverage situation in detail, leading to too optimistic results. The differences are associated mainly to effective height and terrain impact on propagation calculations.