PARIS and AOSTA, Italy� French transmitter network operator TDF and Italian public broadcaster RAI have launched field trials of the new converged mobile broadcast system LTE-A+ Broadcast, according to Broadband TV News.
The joint project is based on the tower overlay concept developed by Professor Ulrich Reimers at Germany�s TU Braunschweig in 2013. It is �also supported by German research institute IRT and broadcast solution providers Expway and GatesAir.
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The trials will explore the possibility of convergence of the LTE technology ecosystem on one side and traditional DVB broadcast infrastructure on the other.
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In the trials, two data streams share the same UHF channel in time-division: one stream is conveying conventional digital HDTV channels to be viewed on domestic DVB-T2 TV sets, while a second embedded stream is conveying a specific broadcast flow intended for 4G LTE-A+ smartphones, laptops and tablets.
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If successful, the adaption of LTE Broadcast to traditional high broadcasting towers would reduce network load, energy consumption and network costs because the cellular and broadcasting networks would cooperate.
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