Adaptive broadcast techniques based on end-user metrics

• Main Author: Bagot, Peter Leslie
• Published: University of Bristol 2016
• Subjects: 621.388
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.702228

If a digital TV signal is successfully received and decoded it can guarantee a set picture quality. Clear operational power thresholds due to the hard failure of digital TV can be set, however when a digital system is operating far in excess of the operational threshold, there is no discernible advantage to either the user or broadcaster. This is effectively a waste of broadcast power; if the system could be adaptively tuned to operate at just above the threshold then the energy efficiency of the overall system would be improved. If the broadcaster had access to accurate. Channel State Information (CSI), then the entire broadcast system could be made adaptive. CSI would come via feedback from television equipment, creating a distributed monitoring network that operates over the internet. In this way, data relating to the quality of a users' channel could be fed back to the broadcaster for use in adaptive algorithms and applied to beamforming techniques to ensure the most energy efficient level of coverage is achieved. To explore the feasibility of an adaptive TV broadcast system, the problem was tackled in three ways in this thesis; computer simulations of an overall system, hardware in the loop analysis of an adaptive system in lab conditions and the use of a professional digital TV planning tool to explore the advantages of static beamforming in the UK network. The work undertaken as part of this thesis built up and analysed an adaptive digital TV broadcast system. The effects of such a system on the UK Digital. Terrestrial Television (DTT) network was studied and the advantages became clear, with potential power savings of up to 2 dB being realised. This equates to an approximate electricity reduction of between 56 million and 98 million kWh per year, which is an annual saving of between £6 million and £11 million and a reduction in carbon emissions by between 25 million and 45 million kg C02e over the same period. This therefore shows a major improvement of the energy efficiency of the UK DTT network.