Digital Video Broadcasting, Rural/Suburban

Calculate the power coverage of four digital video broadcasting transmitters in a rural/suburban scenario.

Digital Video Broadcasting Standards

Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a set of international standards for digital television. The different standards explained in this model are DVB-H, DVB-T, and DVB-T2.

DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast - Handheld) is a technical term used for bringing broadcast services to mobile handsets. DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcast - Terrestrial) is a European based standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television. DVB-T2 (Digital Video Broadcasting - Second Generation Terrestrial) is the extension of the DVB-T television standard. This system transmits compressed digital audio, video, and other data using OFDM modulation to offer a higher bit rate, which is suitable for terrestrial HD TV signal broadcasts.

Model Type

The example model is a network planning project in a rural/suburban scenario. The geometry is described by topography (elevation) and clutter/morpho (land usage). The clutter map describes which areas are designated, for example, agriculture, forest and residential. The database tree enables you to toggle between the two displays.


Figure 1. Clutter/morpho data

Site and Antennas

There are four antenna sites in this scenario denoted “East”, “North”, “West” and “South”. Each site has an omnidirectional antenna at 50 meters height and operates on a single carrier frequency of 602 MHz.
Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Sites tab to view the sites and antennas.

Air Interface

All parameters related to the selected air interface are specified on the Air Interface tab. Settings for orthogonal frequency division multiple access can also be accessed here.

Computational Method

The empirical two-ray model (with breakpoint: dual slope model) is used, which takes multipath into account. When used by itself, there is a possibility of blank pixels in shadow areas. To estimate the signal in shadow areas, the option Consideration of Knife-Edge Diffraction in Vertical Plane was selected.
Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Computation tab to change the model.

Results

Propagation results in this project include power coverage for each transmitting antenna of all four sites. This is the power that an isotropic receiver at a given position would receive from the transmitter.

Network results in this project include the following for every location:
  • Strongest transmitter
  • Best server
  • Signal power
  • Signal-to-Noise-and-Interference Ratio (SNIR)
The image below shows the strongest transmitter for every location.


Figure 2. The strongest transmitter for every location.