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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]

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]

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), a recently introduced technology for future wireless communication systems, enhances the spectral and energy efficiency by intelligently adjusting the propagation conditions between base stations (BSs) and mobile equipments (MEs). An RIS consists of many low-cost passive reflecting elements that are optimized to improve the quality of the received signal. In this paper, we study the problem of power control at the BS and RIS optimization for application to physical-layer broadcasting. Our goal is to minimize the transmit power at the BS by jointly designing the transmit beamforming at the BS and the phase shifts of the passive elements at the RIS. Furthermore, to help validate the proposed optimization methods, we derive lower bounds to quantify the average transmit power at the BS as a function of the number of MEs, the number of RIS elements, and the number of antennas at the BS. The simulation results demonstrate that the average transmit power at the BS is close to the lower bound in an RIS-aided system, and is significantly lower than the average transmit power in conventional schemes without an RIS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of disseminating continuous data flow from a given source node to all other network nodes is known as the dynamic broadcast problem, which is also a fundamental problem in multi-hop wireless networks (e.g., wireless ad hoc and sensor networks). Due to link unreliability and node mobility, the topology of a network typically changes with time. Little work has been conducted to address the dynamic broadcast problem in time-varying wireless multi-hop networks, especially under the popular Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) interference model. In this paper, we study the dynamic broadcast problem in SINR-based time-varying directed acyclic multi-hop wireless networks formed by point-to-point wireless links. We consider the SINR-based link transmission rate model involved in the slot-based link scheduling. We first prove a tight upper bound for the broadcast capacity of the multi-hop wireless networks under study. We then propose an online max-weight Throughput-Optimal Dynamic Broadcast algorithm (TODB) which performs link weight allocation, link scheduling, and data forwarding for each time slot according to the current network connectivity and data reception rates of nodes. We derive the throughput-optimality of the TODB algorithm by proving that the broadcast throughput of TODB can achieve the aforementioned upper bound of the broadcast capacity. We evaluate the performance of TODB in terms of throughput and latency via simulations and the results validate its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) has proposed to introduce the Ultra-High Definition services in three phases: UHD-1 phase 1, UHD-1 phase 2 and UHD-2. The UHD-1 phase 2 specification includes several new features such as High Dynamic Range (HDR) and High Frame-Rate (HFR). It has been shown in several studies that HFR (+100 fps) enhances the perceptual quality and that this quality enhancement is content-dependent. On the other hand, HFR brings several challenges to the transmission chain including codec complexity increase and bit-rate overhead, which may delay or even prevent its deployment in the broadcast echo-system. In this paper, we propose a Variable Frame Rate (VFR) solution to determine the minimum (critical) frame-rate that preserves the perceived video quality of HFR video. The frame-rate determination is modeled as a 3-class classification problem which consists in dynamically and locally selecting one frame-rate among three: 30, 60 and 120 frames per second. Two random forests classifiers are trained with a ground truth carefully built by experts for this purpose. The subjective results conducted on ten HFR video contents, not included in the training set, clearly show the efficiency of the proposed solution enabling to locally determine the lowest possible frame-rate while preserving the quality of the HFR content. Moreover, our VFR solution enables significant bit-rate savings and complexity reductions at both encoder and decoder sides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates secure broadcast communications in intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided millimeter wave (mmWave) symbiotic radio (SR) networks, where the IRS and the base station (BS) are cooperating. Specifically, the IRS assists secure broadcasting for the BS by smartly reconfiguring the phase shifts of the signals from the BS, while delivering its own information to an Internet-of-Things device (IoD). We aim at maximizing the minimum secrecy rate of multiple users by jointly designing the hybrid precoder at the BS and the passive beamformer at the IRS, subject to the rate constraints of both the multiple users and the IoD. The design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem, which is intractable. To handle it, we develop a computationally efficient iterative algorithm based on the successive convex approximation, the efficiency and superiority of which have been validated by simulation results. [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]

This paper presents an adaptive broadcast interval for data dissemination for an infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) environment. The roadside units (RSUs) disseminate the data to the vehicles after a specified broadcast time interval. Time interval tuning for the data dissemination is one of the parameters used to determine the effectiveness of the broadcast time interval at RSU for safety and infotainment message dissemination to the vehicles under a particular RSU coverage. We formulated the problem of computing an optimal broadcast time interval to maximize the service ratio, reducing the duplicate message overhead. The proposed scheme uses the software-defined network (SDN) architecture having OpenFlow-enabled RSUs and SDN controllers. Based on the global view of traffic-related information, the proposed SDN controller computes the broadcast time interval for data dissemination among the vehicles. We used the NS-3 simulator to evaluate the proposed scheme's performance by generating a real scenario of VANET traffic using SUMO. Simulation results show that the proposed SDN-based scheme increases the average service ratio by 15-20% and reduces duplicate message overhead by 7-10% in comparison to the other existing state-of-the-art schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality of experience (QoE) that serves as a direct evaluation of viewing experience from the end users is of vital importance for network optimization, and should be constantly monitored. Unlike existing video-on-demand streaming services, real-time interactivity is critical to the mobile live broadcasting experience for both broadcasters and their audiences. While existing QoE metrics that are validated on limited video contents and synthetic stall patterns have shown effectiveness in their trained QoE benchmarks, a common caveat is that they often encounter challenges in practical live broadcasting scenarios, where one needs to accurately understand the activity in the video with fluctuating QoE and figure out what is going to happen to support the real-time feedback to the broadcaster. In this paper, we propose a temporal relational reasoning guided QoE evaluation approach for mobile live video broadcasting, namely TRR-QoE, which explicitly attends to the temporal relationships between consecutive frames to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the distortion-aware variation. In our design, video frames are first processed by deep neural network (DNN) to extract quality-indicative features. Afterwards, besides explicitly integrating features of individual frames to account for the spatial distortion information, multi-scale temporal relational information corresponding to diverse temporal resolutions are made full use of to capture temporal-distortion-aware variation. As a result, the overall QoE prediction could be derived by combining both aspects. The results of experiments conducted on a number of benchmark databases demonstrate the superiority of TRR-QoE over the representative state-of-the-art metrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beacon broadcasting is of great importance in improving road safety and avoiding dangerous situations in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In order to support emerging vehicular applications such as autonomous driving, the reliability of beacon broadcasting becomes an indispensable issue which is also difficult given the highly dynamic topology and vehicle density. For the territories which are not covered with communication infrastructure, controlling and scheduling in a centralized way may not be applicable. Therefore, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) ad hoc communication is promising to address the ubiquitousness coverage concern. In this paper, a distributed network coding-based medium access control protocol (NC–MAC) is proposed to support V2V beacon broadcasting. We combine the preamble-based feedback mechanism, retransmissions, and network coding together to enhance broadcasting reliability. Extensive simulations are given to show the performance gain of NC–MAC protocol compared to the existing 5 G cellular vehicle-to-everything (C–V2X) MAC protocol in a wide range of scenarios including highway and urban vehicle traces generated by simulation of urban mobility (SUMO). The results show that the proposed protocol can improve the communication reliability as well as scalability. [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]

Efficiency of position-based emergency message broadcast protocols of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) is affected by the position of vehicles that depends entirely on accuracy of the positioning system. In addition, GPS-based dissemination protocols encounter many challenges due to high-energy consumption, low accuracy, and the need for up-to-date maps for real-world automatic applications. In this paper, a Route Segmented Broadcast Protocol based on Radio Frequency identification technology (RSBP-RF) is proposed to eliminate GPS-based problems and increase the efficiency of emergency message broadcasting by improving the positioning accuracy. In this protocol, embedded passive RFID tags are used to segment the route and provide a position-aware technique. In RSBP-RF, each vehicle is informed of its position by crossing on the tags and immediately broadcasts a beacon to its neighbors. Moreover, the proposed protocol includes a proactive relay vehicle selection scheme that uses the received beacons to select the farthest neighboring node. The results of the conducted simulations in the NS-3 tool have validated the effectiveness of the proposed protocol in terms of end-to-end delay, delivery ratio, one-hop delay, collision ratio, relay node selection accuracy, and dissemination performance. Moreover, analysis of the time complexity and message complexity proves the lightness of the RSBP-RF protocol. [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]

This paper deals with the secure communication issues of wireless cooperative networks in the presence of multiple friendly but selfish intermediate nodes. On account of the broadcast nature of wireless communications, it is assailable to malicious eavesdropping. To tackle this challenge in the paper, we present a relay and jammer selection strategy that selects the jammer and relay nodes from intermediate nodes to improve the security of the eavesdropping attacks. The jammer is used to broadcast artificial interference noise on the eavesdropper. The relay acts as a traditional relay that retransmits source signal from the source to the intended destination. For achieving the maximum secrecy capacity by the selected nodes, we introduce a power allocation approach of intermediate nodes that is formulated as a Bertrand game based on price competition. We prove that an optimal pricing scheme can maximize the secrecy capacity and achieve the optimal profits for the selfish friendly nodes. Then, a new particle swarm with simulated anneal optimization algorithm is employed to obtain the solution of pricing and node selection. Finally, the simulation results verify our theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In wireless broadcast, random linear network coding (RLNC) over GF($2^{L}$) is known to asymptotically achieve the optimal completion delay with increasing $L$. However, the high decoding complexity hinders the potential applicability of RLNC schemes over large GF($2^{L}$). In this paper, a comprehensive analysis of completion delay and decoding complexity is conducted for field-based systematic RLNC schemes in wireless broadcast. In particular, we prove that the RLNC scheme over GF(2) can also asymptotically approach the optimal completion delay per packet when the packet number goes to infinity. Moreover, we introduce a new method, based on circular-shift operations, to design RLNC schemes which avoid multiplications over large GF($2^{L}$). Based on both theoretical and numerical analyses, the new RLNC schemes turn out to have a much better trade-off between completion delay and decoding complexity. In particular, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed schemes can attain average completion delay just within 5% higher than the optimal one, while the decoding complexity is only about 3 times the one of the RLNC scheme over GF(2). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the integration of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and broadcasting with buffer-aided (BA) full-duplex (FD) relaying to improve the spectral efficiency of a single-source two-user network. Furthermore, opportunistic relay selection is employed, activating one or two FD relays to support the end-to-end communication. The network performance is improved through buffers, allowing to switch to half-duplex (HD) transmission/reception when FD operation is not feasible. A hybrid BA FD/HD NOMA relay selection algorithm is proposed, herein called $\mathop {\mathrm{BAHyNOMA}}$ , orchestrating the three aforementioned techniques, towards a simple yet efficient and robust relay selection. $\mathop {\mathrm{BAHyNOMA}}$ is evaluated in terms of outage probability, average sum-rate and average delay, and it is observed that the average sum-rate can be doubled, while maintaining low latency. [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]

A two-user multiple access channel is considered, in which the channels undergo slow block fading and the state of each channel is known only to its corresponding transmitter. This paper proposes a novel broadcast strategy for multiple access communication in this channel. In the broadcast approach, in principle, a transmitter with CSI uncertainty sends multiple independent superimposed information layers where the rate of each layer is adapted to a specific channel realization. In the existing broadcast approaches to multiuser communication, the transmitters often directly adopt a single-user strategy and each transmitter adapts its transmission to one unknown channel. The novel aspect of the proposed strategy is that it adapts the designed codebooks to the state of the entire network. This is motivated by the fact that the contribution of each user to the network-wide measures (e.g., capacity region) depends not only on the user’s direct channel to the receiver, but also on the qualities of other channels. Average achievable rate region and outer bounds on the capacity region are characterized. Furthermore, the expected capacity region is investigated, where most part of the capacity region boundary is characterized. Finally, an asymptotic capacity region is also characterized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multimedia broadcast and multicast services (MBMS) in mobile networks has been widely addressed, however an investigation of such a technology in emerging, multi-tier, scenarios is still lacking. Notably, user clustering and resource allocation are extremely challenging in multi-tier networks, and imperative to maximize system capacity and improve quality of user-experience (QoE) in MBMS. Thus, in this paper we propose a clustering and resource allocation approach, named EMB, which specifically addresses heterogeneous networks and accounts for the fact that multimedia content is adaptively encoded into scalable layers depending on the QoE requirements and channel conditions of the heterogeneous users. Importantly, we prove that our clustering algorithm yields Pareto efficient broadcasting areas, multimedia encoding parameters, and resource allocation, in a way that is also fair to the users. Furthermore, numerical results obtained under realistic conditions and using real-world video content, show that the proposed EMB results in lower churn count (i.e., higher number of served users), higher throughput, and increased QoE, while using fewer network resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An autonomous V2V communication mode (also known as side-link mode 4), which facilitates V2V communication in out of eNB coverage areas, has recently been introduced into the Long term evolution (LTE) standard. Recent research has studied the performance of this LTE-V2V autonomous mode for a highway use case. However, performance analysis for a highway use case cannot be easily applied to an intersection use case as it may contain non-line-of-sight (NLOS) communication links. In this paper, we analyze and evaluate the safety message broadcasting performance of LTE-V2V autonomous mode in an urban intersection scenario. Considering practical path loss models, we present the impact of NLOS communication link on the overall message dissemination performance. Through the analytical and simulation results, we show that the overall message dissemination performance degrades drastically with increasing vehicle density and increasing distance of the transmitting vehicle from the intersection. To improve the performance, we propose a vehicle-assisted relaying scheme in which the relaying vehicle is selected in an autonomous manner. We also present two resource allocation strategies for the relaying vehicle. For low to medium vehicle density along the street, we observe significant improvement in message dissemination through relaying compared to the scheme without relaying. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the problem of multirate packet delivery in heterogeneous packet erasure broadcast networks. The technical challenge is to enable users receive packets at different rates, as dictated by the quality of their individual channel. We present a new analytical framework for characterizing the delivery rate and delivery delay performance of a previously proposed non-block-based network coding scheme in the literature. This scheme was studied in homogeneous network settings. We show for the first time, via new theoretical analysis and simulations that it can actually achieve multirate packet delivery. Using acknowledgments from each user, we show that the user with the highest link capacity achieves the maximum possible throughput. Also, a non-zero packet delivery rate is possible for other users, and the delivery rate depends on the difference between the packet arrival rate at the sender and the link capacity of each user. The accuracy of our analytical framework is confirmed by comparing the results with simulations for different settings of packet arrival rate at the sender and link capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]