On April 22 at the Technische Universitaet Braunschweig in Germany, the DVB Project successfully conducted a live transmission using DVB-C2, the second-generation baseline transmission system for digital television via cable networks. The milestone live transmission paves the way for real-world deployments across Europe of the DVB-C2 specification among MSOs to introduce new tiers of HDTV, video-on-demand and interactive TV services.
According to Peter Siebert, executive director, DVB Project, the goal for DVB-C2 was to increase the data rate by taking advantage of technological breakthroughs made since the introduction of the initial DVB-C standard. Alignment with the other second-generation standards, DVB-S2 and DVB-T2, was also part of the objective.
DVB-C2 employs the latest modulation and coding techniques to enable the most efficient use of cable networks, according to the DVB Project. It offers a range of modes and options that can be optimized for the different network characteristics and the requirements of the different services planned for delivery to cable customers. It offers more than 30 percent higher spectrum efficiency under the same conditions as current DVB-C deployments. After analog switch-off the cable networks can be optimized for digital transmission. This will result in a capacity increase of about 60 percent for DVB-C2 when compared with DVB-C.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ulrich H. Reimers, Institut fuer Nachrichtentechnik, Technische Universitaet Braunschweig and chairman of the DVB Technical Module, said DVB-C2 is the third of the second generation DVB broadcast standards (following DVB-S2 and DVB-T2).
“The performance of DVB-C2 is so excellent that it is hardly possible to devise an even better standard in the future,” he said. “Up until now, our knowledge about the features and performance of DVB-C2 was based on simulations.”
The DVB-C2 standard is published by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) as EN 300 429 V1.2.1 “Framing structure, channel coding and modulation for cable systems.” Further information on DVB-C2 can be found on the DVB website along with the DVB BlueBook A138 and the DVB-C2 Implementation Guidelines.
The European research project ReDeSign DVB worked with the Institut fuer Nachrichtentechnik, Technische Universitaet Braunschweig to conduct the tests.
