Field trials for terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting system

This paper presents the field trial results of the terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting (T-DMB) service in Korea. The T-DMB system, based on the Eureka-147 digital audio broadcasting (DAB) system, provides streaming video, CD-quality audio and data services at speeds of up to 300 km/h using H.264 video codec along with additional channel coding and interleaving schemes. In order to provide seamless high-quality services on various radio channels, we measured the bit error rate (BER), electric field strength (EFS), and subjective video quality using specially-designed mobile test equipment. From the field tests we obtained the required effective EFS (EEFS) for error-free reception and also derived the minimum EFS from the link budget analysis. Furthermore, we present the optimal transmit and receive parameters for constructing the T-DMB networks and also developing T-DMB broadcasting equipment and mobile receivers.