World’s first DVB-SH Technical Pilot

10 July 2007

Alcatel-Lucent announced yesterday in Paris that it is in the course of performing a technical test of DVB-SH in S-Band (2.2GHz). The pilot began in June and will run until September 2007 in the South-West France, using the operational 3G mobile infrastructure of mobile network operator SFR. DVB-SH, a specification designed to enable the delivery of video, audio and data services to handheld devices using hybrid satellite/terrestrial networks, was approved by the DVB Steering Board earlier this year and will soon be published as an ETSI standard.

The pilot will use pre-commercial low-power terrestrial repeaters for the broadcast part, co-localized with several 3G operational sites. The broadcast signal from a satellite will be emulated by a transmitter located in a high-altitude helicopter perceived as a fixed point. The mobile terminals used will be pre-commercial terminals provided by Sagem and Samsung Electronics offering an improved reception quality thanks to the antenna diversity related to the use of the S-Band (2.2GHz).

The pilot is intended to evaluate the capability of DVB-SH to make available to a large audience high-quality mobile TV channels, in various usage conditions such as inside and outside buildings, as well as while moving onboard a vehicle. Several innovative technical characteristics related to DVB-SH will be evaluated during this pilot, either separately or in a combination.

More information on DVB-SH:
DVB-SH Fact Sheet
DVB BlueBooks A110 & A111