Optimization of ATSC Mobile Handheld Service Capacity

Mobile TV has become a reality offered on several mobile delivery systems. Among them is the Advanced Television System Committee (ATSC) system for mobile and handheld digital television services, known as ATSC Mobile DTV or ATSC M/H, which has moved from standardization to implementation. As the North American broadcast industry is preparing to provide Mobile DTV service to consumers, this work discusses important technical parameters that affect the TV service quality and capacity. Since additional error correction mechanisms were added to overcome mobile transmission problems, the available payload for M/H services is limited. This creates a need to efficiently use the available M/H bandwidth. The paper aims to optimize the Mobile DTV service capacity while maintaining an acceptable perceived quality. It presents tradeoffs between several factors affecting service capacity and signal robustness, which is prominent for designing Mobile TV broadcasting scenarios. 1. Introduction The concept of television viewed on mobile devices has been a reality since 2005, when South Korea began satellite and terrestrial TV. Japan followed soon thereafter with US cellular carriers such as Sprint Verizon and AT & T. Content providers, such as MobiTV, Slingbox, and Hulu, offer episodes and clips from standard programs delivered on cellular networks. The North American broadcast industry formed an association called Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC) to assist ATSC in developing a standard for providing TV content to mobile handsets. The final standard of ATSC Mobile DTV, designated as A/153 [1], was ready in late 2009. Beside TV, the new standard provides a flexible framework for applications, such as video and audio streaming, real-time mobile commerce, participation and interactive television and advertising that allows M/H viewer to engage in real time with the program. ATSC Mobile DTV has the potential to be the ubiquitous system for delivery of content to devices that move. The main purpose of the standard is to enable reception of DTV broadcaster’s signal on handheld and mobile receivers at vehicular speeds. Based on it, a broadcaster can devote a portion of the station’s assigned channel capacity to mobile service. This portion, however, is overly coded to combat rabidly the changing multipath conditions and poor signal-to-noise ratios usually associated with mobile devices and small antennas. The mobile signal is not decodable by legacy fixed receivers but is compatible as a valid legacy signal. The overall structure of ATSC M/H is partitioned into three