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The Last decade saw significant growth in the digital terrestrial television (DTT) subscribers. The High peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal is implied by the large fluctuations in its amplitude, which is a serious issue in the contemporary and next generation DTT broadcasting systems. These large fluctuations prevent feeding the high power amplifier (HPA) at an operating point near its non-linear (NL) saturation region, thereby lowering its power efficiency. For a better future, energy-efficient green communications is the need of hour. This paper focuses on digital predistortion (DPD), which is among the widely used techniques for HPA linearization in order to minimize the NL effects. DPD technique requires a feedback signal. This paper proposes a novel adding signal-based digital predistortion, where the output of the HPA is gradually linearized by adding a signal at the input in an iterative manner. By Taylor series approximation, the DPD problem can be posed as a convex one. We prove that a tighter upper bound exists for the convergence factor and instead of directly solving the convex problem, we pick a convergence factor value within its bounds that offers a good trade-off between convergence speed and residual error value. The simulation results show that the proposed technique can quickly linearize the HPA with good convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020 Scott Helt Memorial Award was awarded to Manuel Fuentes, Hongzhi Chen, Eduardo Garro, Jose Luis Carcel, David Vargas, Belkacem Mouhouche, David Gomez-Barquero for their paper, “Physical Layer Performance Evaluation of LTE-Advanced Pro Broadcast and ATSC 3.0 Systems.” The papers appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, vol. 65, no. 3, pp. 477–488, September 2019. The purpose of the IEEE Scott Helt Memorial Award is to recognize exceptional publications in the field and to stimulate interest in and encourage contributions to the fields of interest of the Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2018 Scott Helt Memorial Award was awarded to Seho Myung, Sung-Ik Park, Kyung-Joong Kim, Jae-Young Lee, Sunhyoung Kwon, Jeongchang Kim, for their paper, “Offset and Normalized Min-Sum Algorithms for ATSC 3.0 LDPC Decoder.” The papers appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 734–739, Dec. 2017. The purpose of the IEEE Scott Helt Memorial Award is to recognize exceptional publications in the field and to stimulate interest in and encourage contributions to the fields of interest of the Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information regarding details for Papers Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Broadcasting that focuses on the 5G wireless networks. It mentions its main aim to revolutionize different vertical industries including media broadcasting and also mentions the increasing importance of fixed and mobile broadband IP delivery.

This paper presents the research and implementation of a China Digital Radio (CDR) experimental network in Hubei, China with two FM-CDR transmitting stations and four FM-band channels. To study the coverage discontinuity problem in a large service area, the experimental network employs an intelligent networking solution that incorporates multiple service channels carrying Broadcast and Data Services (BADS) and a Common-Regional-Information Channel (CRIC) carrying both service data and system information. The electronic service guide (ESG) carried by CRIC can inform the receivers about the available contents from current and adjacent stations, which can significantly improve the service quality in the overlapping areas, especially under mobile reception environment. Two RF tuners are used in the receiving terminals to access the CRIC, and the BADS channel, respectively. This paper first presents the frequency analysis and coverage tests of the experimental network, and then summarizes the coverage performances with different transmission parameter combinations. The goal is to gain experience in frequency planning, coverage prediction, as well as supportable services of CDR digital audio broadcasting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multicast and broadcast transmissions enhance the spectrum efficiency by delivering a single packet to multiple terminal users. The service continuity (SC) mechanism enables users to continue the service reception when the original transmission is not available anymore. For multicast and broadcast transmissions, the SC mechanism is different from that of unicast because of the different reception conditions. We design and analyze a set of SC mechanisms for New Radio (NR) multicast and broadcast transmissions (MBS) in this paper. The designed SC mechanisms do not require extra data-forwarding resources while meeting the interruption time requirements of diverse applications. To minimize the signalling overhead while meeting the latency requirements, we propose a dynamic SC configuration framework. With the framework, the network condition information is collected and the most suitable SC mechanism is chosen with its parameters. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed dynamic configuration framework outperforms the LTE eMBMS solution with up to 84.07% signaling overhead reduction, facilitating a more efficient multicast and broadcast system in NR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There emerges a strong trend recently to create an intelligent and controllable wireless transmission environment by installing reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) on the surface of diverse. We research the use of RIS in 5G multicast TV applications in this paper. In particular, the shape-adaptive RIS is developed to relay 5G multicast TV signals and achieve extra RIS gain. To optimize the shape bending in RIS model, we employ the algorithm of Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG), a reinforcement learning technique that combines both Q-learning and Policy gradients. Our simulation results show that RIS can considerably enhance the SINR of worst users and improve the system’s overall Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) level for 5G mobile broadcasting services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2010 Scott Helt Memorial Award was awarded to Bogdan Ciubotaru, Gabriel-Miro Muntean, and Gheorghita Ghinea for their paper, "Objective Assessment of Region of Interest-Aware Adaptive Multimedia Streaming Quality," which appeared in the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, vol. 55, pp. 202-212, June 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrestrial broadcast has traditionally targeted TV receivers in the home. But today’s most popular screens are those of SmartPhones and Tablet PCs. (Painful) Experience has shown that in order to reach those gadgets, IEEE- and 3GPP-specified solutions are required. Starting with TOoL+, the authors have proposed bridges between traditional broadcast and today’s wireless connectivity. Within the set of specifications of 3GPP such bridges named MBS, MBMS, and FeMBMS now exist – with limited acceptance by cellular network operators so far. The rapidly growing number of popular data services to SmartPhones, connected cars, etc., and 5G New Radio may change this in the future. Therefore, this paper presents a broadcast extension of today’s 5G New Radio supporting the implementation of High Tower High Power/Medium Power Medium Tower networks overlaying cellular networks. The extension was implemented using software defined radio and tested in a real-world field trial in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper encompasses various topics for 5G-involved broadcasting under the common context converged distribution of 5G media. Particularly, two primary subtopics are addressed: An overlaid coexistence of 5G terrestrial broadcast and Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0; and dual connectivity applications built on top of the convergence between digital broadcasting and 5G unicasting. In the first part, a viable, time-sharing co-transmission system is introduced to overlay 5G Broadcast and ATSC 3.0 frames in the same radio spectrum. The system is carefully designed to comply with current 5G and ATSC 3.0 standards, so that it does not require modifications in either ATSC 3.0 or 5G specifications. To help the future planning in a technical aspect, the reliability performance is in-depth compared between 5G Broadcast and ATSC 3.0 frames, and the motivation of tower overlaying is discussed as well. Subsequently in the $2^{\mathrm{ nd}}$ part, the convergence is in parallel explored with respect to the dual connectivity. To settle a broad-ranged consensus for future convergence, various possible use cases are proposed in an application aspect. Technical, conceptual proposals and implementations are presented, specifically related to edge caching; 8K streaming (with a working prototype); large-scale software updating; data security; and location tracking. We hereby point out how dual connectivity can contribute to realistic scenarios. In turn, the scope of convergence use cases is desirably expanded, so that would encourage the initiatives bridging 5G and broadcasting into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the commercialization of evolved multimedia broadcast multicast services (eMBMS), the number of mobile broadcasting users is growing notably. Previous works reveal that the accuracy of mobile channel estimation will significantly impact the quality of broadcasting services. Motivated by this fact, we apply machine learning (ML) to the fifth-generation Radio Access Network (5G RAN) slicing in this paper for the estimation and the prediction of the channel status in mobile scenarios. More specifically, a cascaded convolutional neural network (CNN)-long short term memory network (LSTM) architecture is developed to achieve channel estimation for mobile broadcasting users. The energy efficiency of the base station (BS) is modeled mathematically, and the sub-optimal solution is achieved by deep Q-Network (DQN) based on the available channel status. Finally, we present the simulation results to justify the performance of our proposed schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To protect military broadcasting against both hostile interference and eavesdropping, an artificial noise (AN) sheltered frequency hopping (FH) broadcasting (ANS-FHB) architecture is proposed in this paper, and the secrecy capacity is employed to measure its secrecy performance. Besides, considering the inevitable frequency mismatch after synchronization will degrade system secrecy in practical applications, the optimal transmitting power allocation (PA) for the confidential information (CI) and AN is provided to maximize secrecy capacity in presence of frequency mismatch. Moreover, to be adapted to various application scenarios, the proposed optimal PA scheme is further simplified according to the frequency synchronization ability and relative channel quality. The analysis and simulations show that the proposed ANS-FHB system can achieve a non-negative secrecy rate even when existing multiple eavesdroppers. In addition, the optimal power ratio of AN to CI shows a downward trend from one to zero as frequency mismatch increases to mitigate the secrecy loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has defined based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) enhanced Multicast Broadcast Multimedia Service (eMBMS) a set of new features to support the distribution of Terrestrial Broadcast services in Release 14. On the other hand, a new 5th Generation (5G) system architecture and radio access technology, 5G New Radio (NR), are being standardized from Release 15 onwards, which so far have only focused on unicast connectivity. This may change in Release 17 given a new Work Item set to specify basic Radio Access Network (RAN) functionalities for the provision of multicast/broadcast communications for NR. This work initially excludes some of the functionalities originally supported for Terrestrial Broadcast services under LTE, e.g., free to air, receive-only mode, large-area single frequency networks, etc. This paper proposes an enhanced Next Generation RAN architecture based on 3GPP Release 15 with a series of architectural and functional enhancements, to support an efficient, flexible and dynamic selection between unicast and multicast/broadcast transmission modes and also the delivery of Terrestrial Broadcast services. The paper elaborates on the Cloud-RAN based architecture and proposes new concepts such as the RAN Broadcast/Multicast Areas that allows a more flexible deployment in comparison to eMBMS. High-level assessment methodologies including complexity analysis and inspection are used to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed architecture design and compare it with the 3GPP architectural requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

3GPP is now carrying forward the development of the point to multipoint transmission mode of 5G on the basis of the cellular infrastructure and standard. Since the dedicated proposal for multimedia broadcast multicast system (MBMS) was approved, the MBMS technologies are evolving with the update of the requirements from 3G to 5G. This paper reviews the latest progress during the evolved MBMS standardization, which focuses on the LTE-based 5G terrestrial broadcast mode. Some agreements in terms of two widely discussed topics during 3GPP meetings, cell acquisition subframe (CAS) enhancement and numerology refinement, are presented. The enhancement of CAS and the update of numerology aim to deal with the service outage issue in the case of covering large area and serving high-mobility users. To verify the improvement brought by the CAS enhancement and the new numerology, simulations from system level and link level are carried out by several organizations and the representative results are presented and analyzed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging broadband service pattern in the 5G era, VR broadcasting needs a considerable amount of bandwidth and strict quality of service (QoS) control. The traditional eMBMS or enTV transmission mode in HetNets consisting of macro cells and small cells cannot bring about a good trade-off between broadband performance and resource utilization for VR broadcasting service. D2D multicasting applied to VR broadcasting can improve the performance of edge users and resource utilization. Motivated by the rapid development of AI techniques, this paper proposes a novel hybrid transmission mode selection based on online reinforcement learning to address this problem. Each VR broadband user can be associated by one of the three modes: macrocell broadcasting, mmWave small cell unicasting and D2D multicasting. This paper first models this intelligent mode decision process as a problem to pursue the optimal system throughput. Then, an online machine learning-based method is proposed to solve this problem, which consists of a fast D2D clustering module based on unsupervised learning and a smart mode selection module based on reinforcement learning. The simulation results verify that the WoLF-PHC and Nash Q-learning perform better than other algorithms in large-scale scenarios and small-scale scenarios, respectively. The proposed intelligent transmission mode selection can also achieve larger VR throughput than traditional broadcasting strategies with a good balance between broadband performance and resource utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents feasibility verification of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0 MIMO system for 8K-UHD terrestrial broadcasting services. For a reliable performance evaluation, computer simulation, laboratory test, and field trial are conducted, and the tests’ results are compared with the same performance metrics. Several physical layer configurations with various data rates from 63 Mbps to 113 Mbps are verified. The field trial results confirm that the ATSC 3.0 MIMO system can support data rates up to 113 Mbps within a 6 MHz bandwidth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The new ways to consume and deliver media content in a wireless environment have led to a significant increase in the demand for spectrum resources. In addition, the arrival of next-generation wireless communication technologies has encouraged the creating of new verticals targeting novel applications, such as industry IoT, e-health, distance learning, smart city, smart-metering. All these new use cases are centred on an IP-based infrastructure. A promising alternative to satisfy the demand for resources is to incorporate a new delivery mechanism that can alleviate the congestion of classical cell-based point-to-point broadband wireless infrastructures. The best-positioned candidate is the next-generation Digital Terrestrial Television system, which offers a very spectrum efficient one-to-many PHY, and for the first time, native IP support. In ATSC 3.0, the whole system was designed with an IP-centric view, whereas DVB has created standards to deliver services to generic IP devices (DVB-I). Nevertheless, there is still a last missing piece to bring the broadcast infrastructure to the IP-connected world: a Broadcast Core Network (BCN). In this paper, the basics of a BCN are presented with new use cases that are attractive to Broadcast Network Operator (BNO). A possible roadmap towards implementation is described, and a service-based architecture for a BCN is presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes systems, devices, and methods to implement a bi-directional integrated inter-tower wireless communications network (IITWCN). The described technology can be implemented in combination with the Broadcast Core Network (BCN) in next generation broadcast eco-system and, therefore, support new business cases for broadcast operators such as the delivery of flexible datacasting services or support broadcast or point-to-point Internet services. The introduced bi-directional inter-tower communications network (ITCN) extends the previous unidirectional in-band distribution links (IDL) and adopts the on-channel repeater (OCR) as a simplified backhaul solution in single frequency networks (SFN). The concept of the coordinated ITCN is also presented, aiming at future broadcast Internet services. The ITCN provides a scalable and configurable network solution embedded in a broadcast system, which becomes independent from any non-broadcasting telecommunication infrastructure. The described technology partially relies on the infrastructure of the underlying broadcast/multicast network, using the allocated service channels without requiring additional frequency bands or a separate frequency band. The bi-directional inter-transmitter communication links are therefore referred to as integrated transmission links and the corresponding network as an integrated network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service(MBMS), Multicast/Broadcast Single Frequency Network (MBSFN) and Single-cell Point-to-multipoint Network (SC-PTM) are two essential ways to organize networks to provide multicast services. MBSFN shows its unique advantage of enhancing signals at the boundary of two cells, however, highly requiring synchronization of symbols. SC-PTM shows the advantage of the flexibility on the network deployment. The comparison and complementarity of these two modes are explored. In this paper, we analyze the reception performance of MBSFN and SC-PTM from multiple perspectives. We first compare the successful transmission probability (STP) of MBSFN with that of SC-PTM. Then, we consider optimal power control problems in MBSFN and SC-PTM. The corresponding power control optimization problems are with fraction and max-min forms and solved by the Dinkelbach algorithm. Furthermore, we propose a joint mode-selection and power-control method in the hybrid mode of MBSFN and SC-PTM, where each cell could select the multicast mode from MBSFN and SC-PTM. This is a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem and solved by the concave-convex procedure (CCCP) and the Dinkelbach algorithm. To further improve the throughput, the appropriate successful reception proportion is selected under the opportunistic multicast. Finally, the numerical simulations show the performance of our algorithms and compare the throughput of two modes, which verify our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-layer broadcast systems distribute services across time and frequency domain by means of power-division multiplexing. Successive interference cancelation is required, in general, in order to extract the content of all services. For a low-complexity implementation, the receiver can obtain the strongest (top-layer) signal assuming underlying signals to behave like thermal noise. The thermal noise assumption may not be valid under certain conditions and a more accurate characterization of the interference could bring improved performance. This paper analyzes the validity of the noise-like assumption considering the power ratio between signals and the required carrier-to-noise ratio for error-free reception. The main contribution of the paper is the proposal of a demapping algorithm that exploits the knowledge of the constellation of underlying signals. Generalized mutual information, performance evaluation, and complexity analysis are provided with the additive white Gaussian noise-like assumptions and with the proposed alternative in order to assess the potential performance improvements that can be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The era of the fifth-generation (5G) New Radio (NR) technology has just begun, and its promises to substantially improve the system performance have turned into reality. The 5G NR enabled Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) is almost upon us and will represent an effective solution to provide services anytime, anywhere, and over wider coverage areas. In this context, high throughput satellite systems with advanced multi-beam transmissions have gained significant attention owing to their ability to boost the system capacity through beam frequency re-use, increased user data rates, and system spectral efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel radio resource management scheme, named Single-Frequency Multi-Beam Transmission (SF-MBT), for efficient delivery of the enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) services over the 5G NR multi-beam NTN systems. The main thinking is to group beams into the dedicated Beam Areas, wherein a certain content flow is delivered via simultaneous multi-beam transmissions over the same radio resources without causing inter-beam interference. A simulation campaign is conducted under different scenarios to assess the effectiveness of the proposed SF-MBT algorithm as compared to the current schemes based on frequency reuse. System-wide performance is evaluated in terms of the aggregate data rate, mean throughput, and system spectral efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the ever increasing demand for better service quality and availability, the next generation digital TV (DTV) broadcast, a.k.a., the ATSC 3.0, is developed with new capabilities to deliver 4K ultra-high-definition (4K-UHD) services to fixed receivers, robust HD-quality services to mobile receivers, as well as non-broadcast services (e.g., broadband), including Internet of Things (IoT), Connected Vehicles, etc. To realize these capabilities, it becomes necessary to evolve the existing single-transmitter high-power-high-tower (HPHT) network to multi-transmitter low-power-low-tower single-frequency-networks (SFN), which requires installing new transmitters. Each new transmitter needs a feederlink to receive the service data from the broadcast gateway (BG) for transmission. This feederlink contributes to a significant portion of installation and operational costs of the new transmitters. This paper proposes a wireless in-band distribution link (WIDL) technology, where the distribution data is delivered to the newly deployed transmitters from the existing DTV towers wirelessly sharing the same TV band with the broadcast services. The distribution signal is multiplexed with service signal in the same ATSC 3.0 waveform. Layered division multiplexing (LDM) technology is proposed to achieve more efficient transmission of the distribution signal. The WIDL offers better performance and more robust operation than the on-channel repeater (OCR) technologies. More importantly, it offers the possibility of delivering backhaul data for future applications over the DTV infrastructure, such as IoT and connected vehicles. Therefore, the proposed WIDL is one enabling technology to achieve convergence of broadcast services with broadband and other wireless services on the DTV spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes reliability and quality gains that can be achieved by a broadcast-unicast convergent platform operating in non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based cellular networks. The analysis is addressed in network scope, dealing with randomly distributed users and base stations (BSs) within a stochastic geometry framework. Additionally a well-known Zipf-distribution popularity model on user demands is also taken into account, which effectively reflects a broadcasting gain from reducing redundant resource expense toward the users demanding same contents. Based on the stochastic modeling, closed-form delivery success probabilities and the consequent transmission rates are analytically derived, where the derivations are obtained separately for the networks with different access control strategies. Furthermore, the optimal broadcast content selection strategy maximizing the transmission rates is proposed. By means of numerical calculations, NOMA is shown to achieve substantial gain at broadcast/unicast joint transmission compared to the conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) network, particularly for the service configuration with popular contents having lower target service rates than less popular contents as long as the number of broadcast programs is restricted to be equal to the number of unicast services in a single frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tackles a non-orthogonal multiplexing (NOM)-based realization of broadcast-unicast overlay transmission in cloud-radio access networks (C-RANs). In particular, fronthaul compression and precoding are jointly optimized to maximize the throughput in the considered network. The problem further optimizing the power allocation between broadcast and unicast signals is addressed as well. The algorithmic solutions are obtained by means of majorization minimization (MM)-type difference-of-convex (DC) programming. Moreover, the proposed solutions are further extended to cope with the uncertainty of channel state information (CSI) to enable robust transmission. Computer simulations are performed to verify that the proposed scheme attains substantial achievable rate gain over the conventional decentralized precoding in entire parameter regions considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the psychological effects of viewing ultra-high-resolution images. Many subjective evaluation experiments assessing the quality of images have been conducted. However, the psychological effects of viewing ultra-high-resolution images have not been well investigated, especially under non-standard viewing conditions. Although a higher image resolution has been reported to affect the sense of realness, more impressive factors that appeal to the general viewers have not been examined. This paper conducted subjective evaluation experiments, in which images with different resolutions using familiar subjects were presented to viewers with practical viewing distances, and their ratings of impressions were obtained. In addition, we examined the relationship between higher- and lower-order impressions. We found an enhancement of the impressions of “beautiful” or “delicious” with an increase in the resolutions of the presented images. Furthermore, the tendency of this impression enhancement was observed even when viewing it as far as four times the design viewing distance. The results of multiple regression analyses provide insight on the production and processing of ultra-high-resolution images for impression enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owning the merits of flexible networking, rapid deployment, strong line-of-sight communications and so on, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has been regarded as a promising technology for the Fifth-Generation (5G) wireless network to realise its ambition of ubiquitous connectivity to support the various applications, e.g., broadcasting/multicasting services. However, the unique features of the UAV systems, e.g., highly agile mobility in the three-dimensional space, and the significant size, weight and power constraints, pose new challenges for 5G broadcasting communications. In order to fully harvest the benefits of UAV-aided 5G communications for broadcasting services, a new position based lightweight beamforming technology is proposed in this paper to enhance the capability of signal reception in 5G UAV broadcasting communications. Instead of relying on the channel estimation to form beams, which would cause significant broadband consumption, the position and mobility information of UAV system is exploited to predict UAV movement and form narrow beams to track UAV for signal enhancement and interference cancellation. To flight against the inherent position error, a new position correction method is designed to jointly utilise the DoA information of 5G system and the position information of the UAV system. Comprehensive simulation experiments are conducted based on 3GPP 5G specifications and the results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the benchmark Zero-Forcing (ZF) without position prediction and position-based beamforming without position correction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Commission requires all European Union (EU) Member States to use telecommunications networks to alert the population of an ongoing crisis or an upcoming threat by June 2022. Public Warning System in Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 5G System currently supports a text-based warning using Cell Broadcast technology. Cell Broadcast does not support multimedia warning message delivery. This paper analyses requirements that need to be fulfilled to support multimedia warning message delivery in the 5G System and describes trials of a broadcast multimedia public warning alert system. The trials demonstrate delivery of multimedia public warning messages using Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS), dynamic spectrum management and bonded connections. By using eMBMS the public warning messages can be sent with additional robustness and in multicast mode, resulting also in less congestion to the network as the messages do not need to be sent separately to each user. Dynamic spectrum management system allows to dynamically obtain spectrum resources for the public warning system messages and the bonded connections improves the throughput and reliability of the delivery by combining the capacity of several different networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifth-Generation (5G) mobile networks are expected to perform according to the stringent performance targets assigned by standardization committees. Therefore, significant changes are proposed to the network infrastructure to achieve the expected performance levels. Network Function Virtualization, cloud computing and Software Defined Networks are some of the main technologies being utilised to ensure network design, with optimum performance and efficient resource utilization. The aforementioned technologies are shifting the network architecture into service-based rather device-based architecture. In this regard, we introduce Media Casting as a service (MCaaS) and IoRL-Cache service (IoRL-C). The former is a service that proposed as an integration solution between the broadcasting industry and Mobile Network Operators, while the latter proposed as a solution for improving IoRL small-cells caching efficiency. IoRL is an emerging 5G small-cell for indoor environment, which utilises mmWave and Visible Light Communications (VLC) as access technologies, while exploiting Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) technologies to offer flexible and intelligent services to its clients. In this paper, we introduce MCaaS and IoRL-C services, we perform simulation work for testing IoRL-C as a proof of concept for both services. The network was simulated using OMNeT++ simulation tool, and we validated the services efficiency by comparing their performance with traditional deployments. We have also examined the cache service performance at different link lengths, and found out that IoRL-C is able to support IoRL small-cells with more than 50+Km separation distances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the ATSC 3.0 broadcast Radio Access Technology (RAT) is aligned with 3GPP 5G NR RAT in the context of 5G convergence starting in Release 16. The 5G system architecture release 16 includes a new 5G physical layer known as 5G NR “New Radio” and a “Cloud Native” 5G Core (5GC) using cloud computing. The 5GC is agnostic to the type of radio access technology used and is enabler of many types of convergence. A novel shared multi-tenant broadcast core network architecture designed to interwork with 5GC is discussed. With the 3GPP 5G NR unicast and Non-3GPP ATSC 3.0 broadcast synergistically aligned using methods of Release 16. This includes using 3GPP Access Traffic Steering, Switching, Splitting (ATSSS) and a multi-radio dual simultaneous connected User Equipment (UE). This aligns ATSC 3.0, the first forward looking (non-backward-compatible) native IP OFDM broadcast standard, with 3GPP LTE/5G unicast as a converged 5G vertical. The proposed method and architecture are orthogonal to LTE broadcast Release 16 and is synergistic to 5G NR mixed-mode multicast unicast in future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the challenge of broadcast and unicast convergence by proposing a PHY/MAC (Physical Layer/Medium Access Control) architecture for 5G New Radio (NR). The solution is based on Power domain Non Orthogonal Multiple Access (P-NOMA). The main PHY/MAC configuration parameters have been analyzed theoretically and their impact on the service configurations is presented in this manuscript. The system concept has been translated into a prototype model and different evaluation tests are presented. First, simulations show that the PHY layer performs better than Time Division Multiplexing/Frequency Division Multiplexing (TDM/FDM) choices of current broadband access systems. Second, performance tests using a network simulation tool are described. The results for capacity, latency and reliability demonstrate that the proposed solution offers an excellent broadcast/unicast convergence choice with significant gain values with respect to legacy PHY/MAC alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents Internet protocol (IP)-based convergence of broadcast and broadband networks using Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0–the next generation terrestrial broadcasting standard. In the broadcast network, the combination of Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM) and Scalable High Efficiency Video Codec (SHVC) is used, enabling efficient use of spectrum when mobile and fixed services are intended in a single radio frequency (RF) channel. The proposed use case of IP-based convergence is that a service is largely consumed through the high power high tower (HPHT) based broadcast network, and then alternative streams are requested via unicast for areas where broadcast signals are not receivable. The implementation details of broadcast and broadband convergence include MPEG Media Transport (MMT)/Real-time Objective delivery over Unidirectional Transport (ROUTE) description for broadcast useand Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) for broadband use. To achieve seamless convergence between broadcast and broadband, transmission and reception systems based on ATSC 3.0 are hardware-developed and their implementation details are described. The proposed IP-based convergence use case of ATSC 3.0 broadcast and broadband is verified in a real-field environment using a public cellular network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents eight demonstrators and one showcase developed within the 5G-Xcast project. They experimentally demonstrate and validate key technical enablers for the future of media delivery, associated with multicast and broadcast communication capabilities in 5th Generation (5G). In 5G-Xcast, three existing testbeds: IRT in Munich (Germany), 5GIC in Surrey (U.K.), and TUAS in Turku (Finland), have been developed into 5G broadcast and multicast testing networks, which enables us to demonstrate our vision of a converged 5G infrastructure with fixed and mobile accesses and terrestrial broadcast, delivering immersive audio-visual media content. Built upon the improved testing networks, the demonstrators and showcase developed in 5G-Xcast show the impact of the technology developed in the project. Our demonstrations predominantly cover use cases belonging to two verticals: Media & Entertainment and Public Warning, which are future 5G scenarios relevant to multicast and broadcast delivery. In this paper, we present the development of these demonstrators, the showcase, and the testbeds. We also provide key findings from the experiments and demonstrations, which not only validate the technical solutions developed in the project, but also illustrate the potential technical impact of these solutions for broadcasters, content providers, operators, and other industries interested in the future immersive media delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to meet the tremendous requirements on the convergence between broadband and broadcast, this paper proposes to incorporate layered division multiplexing (LDM), an important variant of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technologies, into Millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with device-to-device (D2D) communications to simultaneously provide broadcast and unicast services. The performance of the proposed full-duplex D2D-aided mmWave MIMO-NOMA with randomly deployed users is then analyzed under practical assumptions. Closed-form expressions of both the outage probability and the ergodic capacity are then derived by using the Laplace transform technique. Finally, detailed numerical results reveal the performance gains of the proposed scheme compared with the LDM without D2D communications and conventional time division multiplexing based scheme. The impacts of the antenna array gain and the transmission power of both the base station and the full-duplex link on system performance are also presented. Besides, we observe that it is vital to optimal the transmission power of the full-duplex link which ensures less self-interference to enhance the system capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the coding and transmission of immersive 360° video has been intensely studied. The technologies provided by standards developing organizations mainly address requirements coming from over-the-top services. The terrestrial broadcast remains in many countries the mainstream medium to deliver high quality contents to a wide audience. To enable seamless introduction of immersive 360° video services over terrestrial broadcast, the deployed technologies shall fulfill requirements such as backward compatibility to legacy receivers and high bandwidth efficiency. While bandwidth efficiency is addressed by existing techniques, none of them enables legacy video services decoding. In this paper, a novel scalable coding scheme is proposed to enable immersive 360° video services introduction over broadcast networks. The experiments show that the proposed scalable coding scheme provides substantial coding gains of 14.99% compared to simulcast coding and introduces a limited coding overhead of 5.15% compared to 360° single-layer coding. A real-time decoding implementation is proposed, highlighting the relevance of the proposed design. Eventually, an end-to-end demonstrator illustrates how the proposed solution could be integrated in a real terrestrial broadcast environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-destination media synchronization (IDMS) is a key requirement to enable successful networked shared media experiences between remote users. This paper presents an adaptive, accurate and standard-compliant IDMS solution for hybrid broadcast and broadband delivery. Apart from providing multi- and cross-technology support, the presented IDMS solution is able to accomplish synchronization when different formats/versions of the same, or even related, contents are being played out in a shared session. It is also able to independently manage the playout processes of different groups of users. The IDMS solution has been integrated within an end-to-end platform, which is compatible with the hybrid broadcast broadband TV standard. It has been applied to digital video broadcasting—terrestrial technology and tested for a Social TV scenario, by also including an ad-hoc chat tool as an interaction channel. The results of the conducted (objective and subjective) evaluations prove the statisfactory behavior and performance of the IDMS solution and platform as well as in terms of the perceived quality of experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a detailed performance analysis of the physical layer of two state-of-the-art point-to-multipoint (PTM) technologies: evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS) and Advanced Television Systems Committee - Third Generation (ATSC 3.0). The performance of these technologies is evaluated and compared using link-level simulations, considering relevant identified scenarios. A selection of Key Performance Indicators for the International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020) evaluation process has been considered. Representative use cases are also aligned to the test environments as defined in the IMT-2020 evaluation guidelines. It is observed that ATSC 3.0 outperforms both eMBMS solutions, i.e., MBMS over Single Frequency Networks (MBSFN) and Single-Cell PTM (SC-PTM) in terms of spectral efficiency, peak data rate and mobility, among others. This performance evaluation serves as a benchmark for comparison with a potential 5G PTM solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a cache-based popular services pushing solution on high-speed train (HST) by using converged wireless broadcasting and cellular networks. Pushing and caching popular services on the HST to improve the capacity of the network is a very efficient way; and it can also bring a better user experience. The most popular services are transmitted and cached on the vehicle relay station of the train ahead the departure time in the proposed model. Then, the most popular services are broadcasted and cached on the User Equipment after all the passengers are on the train; the less popular services are delivered to the passengers by P2P mode through the relayed cellular network on the train. Specifically, we firstly use the dynamic programming algorithm to maximize the network capacity in limited pushing time, which can be converted to the 0–1 Knapsack problem. Furthermore, we propose three greedy algorithms to approximate the optimal solution on account of the high time complexity of dynamic programming when the input scale gets bigger. And simulation results show that the proposed popularity-based greedy algorithm performs well. Moreover, as the passengers may get on and off the HST when arriving at an intermediate station, a services rebroadcast algorithm is employed when more intermediate stations are considered. U-shaped distribution is adopted to indicate the number of passengers getting on and off the train. Simulations also show that the proposed rebroadcast algorithm can efficiently improve the capacity of the converged networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to the traditional TDM/FDM, the advanced television systems committee (ATSC) 3.0 next generation digital TV standard has adopted state-of-the-art coding and modulation, as well as the new layered division multiplexing (LDM) technology. The ATSC 3.0 system is able to provide higher data throughput, more robust reception, better spectrum efficiency, and flexible service combinations in one RF channel with different robustness and reception conditions. Due to the adoption of a two-layer LDM, the coverage for ATSC 3.0 is very different from the legacy one-transmitter-one-coverage ATSC 1.0 system. With the new enabling technologies, the ATSC 3.0 can greatly increase the coverage/service areas, reduce the distance between co-channel assignments, and introduce local program insertion and targeted advertisement. This paper addresses the ATSC 3.0 coverage and co-channel interference issues, by using the two-layer LDM technology with different operating parameters. Simulations demonstrate that, similar to the 4G long term evolution, the ATSC 3.0 co-channel assignment could be reduced to two times the service coverage radius. This means an improvement of the spectrum efficiency by up to four times in comparison with today’s system. It is also proved through simulations that significant TV program gains can be obtained with this new system. The deployment of single frequency networks can further improve the coverage and reduce the interference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rotated and cyclic Q-delayed (RCQD) quadrature amplitude modulation provides signal space diversity and thus improves system performance over fading channels. However, previously published RCQD solutions were designed without fully considering the high demodulation complexity which prohibits wider applications. In this paper, a complete solution is proposed to reduce complexity for both the modulator and the demodulator. This solution uses a series of rotation angles ${\alpha =}$ arctan($1/{\sqrt {M}}$) which bring many interesting properties to the RCQD signals. A simplified sphere demapping algorithm is derived for fading channels with and without erasure events. In contrast to the sphere-decoder used for multiple input multiple output detection, the radius of the proposed sphere-demapper involves an exact amount of constellation points, thereby ensuring to perform the soft demapping operation successfully. Moreover, when either the in-phase (${I}$) or the quadrature component (${Q}$) is erased, the proposed demapping algorithm performs as well as the full-complexity max-log algorithm, with a reduced complexity. Compared to the solution currently used in DVB-T2, the proposed method reduces tremendously the computational complexity while still achieving similar performance over fading channels and even better performance over fading erasure channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signal is a serious issue in multicarrier communication systems, such as second generation terrestrial digital video broadcasting (DVB-T2) systems. These large fluctuations prevent feeding the high power amplifier at an operating point near its non-linear saturation region thereby lowering its power efficiency. In recent years, tone reservation (TR) PAPR reduction techniques have been deeply studied and included in the DVB-T2 and the American digital video broadcasting (ATSC 3.0) specifications. It is based on a gradient iterative approach where, at each iteration, a predefined kernel is used to reduce one peak in time domain. In this paper, a novel TR PAPR reduction technique namely individual carrier allocation for multiple peaks (ICMPs) that is based on a new kernel signal is proposed. This algorithm, compatible with the DVB-T2 standard, offers better performance than the gradient-based DVB-T2 algorithm but suffers with increased complexity for higher modes of DVB-T2 and ATSC 3.0 as the number of required iterations is equal to the number of reserved tones. To overcome this issue, we propose an improved ICMP technique, called grouped ICMP defined with this new kernel. The main principle of this new algorithm consists in dividing the reserved tones into $G$ groups. This highly reduces the number of iterations, now equal to the number of groups, and thereby the latency. An in-depth performance analysis has been done by implementing our algorithm on a testbed platform with real power amplifiers. Both the simulation and experimental results demonstrated that the proposed PAPR reduction algorithm offers very good performance/complexity/latency tradeoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective assessment of multimedia quality using machine learning (ML) has been gaining popularity especially in the context of both traditional (e.g., terrestrial and satellite broadcast) and advance (such as over-the-top media services, IPTV) broadcast services. Being data-driven, these methods obviously rely on training to find the optimal model parameters. Therefore, to statistically compare and validate such ML-based quality predictors, the current approach randomly splits the given data into training and test sets and obtains a performance measure (for instance mean squared error, correlation coefficient etc.). The process is repeated a large number of times and parametric tests (e.g., ${t}$ test) are then employed to statistically compare mean (or median) prediction accuracies. However, the current approach suffers from a few limitations (related to the qualitative aspects of training and testing data, the use of improper sample size for statistical testing, possibly dependent sample observations, and a lack of focus on quantifying the learning ability of the ML-based objective quality predictor) which have not been addressed in literature. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to shed light on the said limitations both from practical and theoretical perspectives wherever applicable, and in the process propose an alternate approach to overcome some of them. As a major advantage, the proposed guidelines not only help in a theoretically more grounded statistical comparison but also provide useful insights into how well the ML-based objective quality predictors exploit data structure for learning. We demonstrate the added value of the proposed set of guidelines on standard datasets by comparing the performance of few existing ML-based quality estimators. A software implementation of the presented guidelines is also made publicly available to enable researchers and developers to test and compare different models in a repeatable manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadcasting high dynamic range (HDR) video has been demonstrated as largely preferred when compared to standard dynamic range (SDR), mainly due to its capability of representing more details in dark and bright regions. Additionally, progress over the last decades on creation, compression, transmission and rendering of HDR content signals a forthcoming deployment of HDR broadcasting services. Lack of a widely supported recommendation regarding bandwidth allocation for HDR compressed streams or a unique compression approach, prevent faster deployment of such services. This paper investigates the performance of a dual-layer backward-compatible compression codec, when compared to state-of-the-art HDR compression strategies, in terms of perceived quality. The evaluated system is a dual-layer compression scheme enabling the transmission of a backward-compatible SDR stream along with an HDR stream, reconstructed from the residual-based enhancement layer and SDR mapping (i.e., prediction). Comparison is made to two compression strategies realizing uncompromised SDR or HDR through the use of single-layer systems multiplexed with metadata. Metadata contains information necessary to map HDR into SDR or SDR into HDR streams. Our conclusion provides guidance regarding the compression strategy to use as well as bandwidth allocation for HDR delivery, ensuring both SDR and HDR contents with perceptually acceptable quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a class of high-performance forward error correction codes, turbo codes, which can approach the channel capacity, could become a candidate of the coding methods in future terrestrial broadcasting (TB) systems. Among all the demands of future TB system, high throughput and low latency are two basic requirements that need to be met. Parallel turbo decoding is a very effective method to reduce the latency and improve the throughput in the decoding stage. In this paper, a parallel turbo decoder is designed and implemented in field-programmable gate array (FPGA). A reverse address generator is proposed to reduce the complexity of interleaver and also the iteration time. A practical method of modulo operation is realized in FPGA which can save computing resources compared with using division operation. The latency of parallel turbo decoder after implementation can be as low as 23.2 us at a clock rate of 250 MHz and the throughput can reach up to 6.92 Gbps. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Future media transmission as a consistent target is pursued by both next mobile communication system (5G) and advanced digital terrestrial television system. High data rate and flexibility are major considerations for future media transmission. Broadcasting network facilitates high-efficiency transmission of popular or live video in large area, and while, cellular network tends to provide personalized and localized services with a unicast/multicast model. The broadcast-like scheme emerges in 5G to resolve the high demand for bandwidth. However, it requires high deployment cost and imposes much interference on unicast/multicast services. In this paper, a cooperative structure of cellular network and broadcasting network using cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is proposed. The expenses of constructing hybrid network can be significantly cut down by applying the centralization and virtualization of C-RAN. Besides, technical approaches for 3GPP and ATSC cooperation in physical layer is detailed. Dedicated return channel (DRC) of broadcasting network is proposed to enable seamless interaction between broadcasters and few users in a remote area with high expense of cellular tower deployment. To loosen the real-time physical layer pipes period restriction of DRC system, three alternative periods are investigated to provide more flexibility to broadcasters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

These instructions give guidelines for preparing papers for this publication. Presents information for authors publishing in this journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These instructions give guidelines for preparing papers for this publication. Presents information for authors publishing in this journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These instructions give guidelines for preparing papers for this publication. Presents information for authors publishing in this journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Massive multi-input multioutput (MIMO) is believed to be an effective technique for future terrestrial broadcasting systems. Reciprocity calibration is one of the major practical challenges for massive MIMO systems operating in time-division duplexing mode. A new closed-loop reciprocity calibration method is investigated in this paper which can support online calibration with a higher accuracy compared to the existing methods. In the first part of the proposed method, an optimized relative calibration is introduced using the same structure of traditional relative calibration, but with less impaired hardware in the reference radio chain. In the second part, a test device (TD)-based calibration is proposed which makes online calibration possible. An experiment setup is built for the measurement of the base station hardware impairments and TD-based calibration implementation. Simulation results and the error vector magnitude of UE received signal after calibration show that the performance of our proposed method is improved significantly compared to the existing relative calibration methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard enhances Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Services (MBMS) to provide highly efficient transmission of multicast/broadcast services. This paper aims at clarifying which is the best option for the Enhanced MBMS (E-MBMS) network configuration according to the operator needs. Besides, it describes the main technical features of the new E-MBMS LTE standard, for both streaming and file delivery, and derives optimum operation modes. Some relevant conclusions are drawn from a set of simulation results calibrated with International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication (ITU-R) guidelines. Regarding streaming delivery, results show that increasing the MBMS over a Single Frequency Network (MBSFN) area size allows employing a higher modulation and coding scheme level, which entails more streaming channels per MBSFN area. Concerning file delivery, results show that the reduction in the mean throughput of unicast users matches exactly the percentage of stolen subframes. Besides, the hybrid approach suggested in this paper improves the file delivery efficiency while eliminating the dependency on a MBMS threshold. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]