DVB announced Oct. 31, 2012, that its steering committee has approved the DVB-NGH (Next Generation Handheld) specification which is designed for the next decade of broadcast content delivery to handheld and mobile devices.
Based on the DVB-T2 standard, DVB-NGH opens the way to improvements and extensions that will assist signal reception by mobile and portable devices.
They include MIMO (Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output), Time Frequency Slicing (TFS) with a single tuner, non-uniform constellations, improved and extended LDPC codes for lower code rates, more efficient time interleaving and ultra-robust layer-1 signalling. The DVB-NGH specification also covers a hybrid profile where terrestrial and satellite transmission schemes can be combined.
“NGH covers the latest modulation as well as coding technologies and can be regarded as the most sophisticated terrestrial broadcast air interface. Furthermore it also offers additional operational flexibility, such as different protection for audio and video streams in one service,” said DVB executive director Peter Siebert.