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In recent years, the advances in mobile network technologies have revolutionized the paradigm how the users receive video and audio content. With the rise of smart phones and tablets having large screens, users have become more interested than anytime before in watching linear and non-linear TV programs on their mobile devices. This is because the users can fetch nowadays the content using their mobile devices at anytime and any place they are located. Facing this phenomenon, broadcasters are looking for new means to reach the users of digital natives that are interested in watching TV on their mobile devices. As most mobile devices are based on a global 3rd generation partnership project standard, the enhanced multimedia broadcast multicast system (eMBMS) of long term evolution (LTE) network is foreseen as one potential candidate for delivering broadcast services. In order to investigate the capability and limitations of today’s LTE eMBMS network, a field trial was carried out in Munich, Germany. This paper describes the setup of the field trial and presents a comprehensive analysis of the LTE eMBMS technology with respect to performance and future enhancements. The measurement data is compared against simulation models for field strength and path loss of each transmitter, eMBMS useful field strength and received power, and signal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR). Moreover, the performance of cyclic prefix (CP) durations that are longer than the standardized values of 16.67 us and 33.33 us is evaluated using the calibrated simulation models. Results have shown that the simulation models can adequately predict the measurement data. Moreover, it is shown that a CP duration of 66.67 us provides a gain in SINR and achieves the best tradeoff in terms of maximum user velocity and performance in networks with limited inter-site distance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The final coverage and associated performance of a single frequency networks (SFNs) is a joint result of the properties of all transmitters in the SFN. Due to the large number of parameters involved in the process, finding the right configuration is quite complex. The purpose of this paper is to find optimal SFN network configurations for second generation digital terrestrial broadcast system (DVB-T2). Offering more options of system parameters than its predecessor DVB-T, DVB-T2 allows large SFN networks. However, self-interference in SFNs gives rise to restrictions on the maximum intertransmitter distance and the network size. In order to make optimum use of the spectrum, the same frequency can be reused over different geographical areas—beyond the reuse distance to avoid co-channel interference. In this paper, a methodology based on theoretical network models is proposed. A number of network architectures and network reference models are considered here for different reception modes in order to study the effects of key planning factors on the maximum SFN size and minimum reuse distance. The results show that maximum bitrate, network size, and reuse distance are closely related. In addition, it has been found that the guard interval is not the only limiting parameter and that its impact strongly depends on the rest of DVB-T2 mode parameters as well as on the network characteristics (equivalent radiated power, effective height, and intertransmitter distance). Assuming that the carrier to noise ratio requirements are in the vicinity of 20 dB and bitrates over 30 Mb/s, it has been found that the network can be as large as 360 \times 360 km (delivering 39.2 Mb/s) or even 720 \times 720 km (delivering 37.5 Mb/s). The reuse distance will also have a complex dependency on the DVB-T2 mode and especially the network parameters, ranging from below 100 to 300 km. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]