DVB technology, standards and regulations
Digital TV is moving from strength to strength as the launch of new digital services and the transition from existing analogue ones truly gets underway. A number of books are starting to appear on the topic. Digital Video Broadcasting: Technology, Standards and Regulations is one such book. Unlike most others however, the book doesn't just cover technology, but also the policy and philosophy behind this revolution.
The book is aimed at decision- and policy-makers in industry, academia and government. It gives a general overview of digital TV government policy in Europe, the US and Japan, to help understand the current developments that have taken place there. It also gives a technical overview of the most prolific digital TV standards – those developed in Europe by the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) project.
With a forward by Theo Peek, chairman of the DVB Project, the book hides neither its roots nor its basic aim - which is to explain political developments around the world – but instead concentrates on the technical developments that arose from Europe.
Digital Video Broadcasting: Technology, Standards and Regulations is divided broadly into four sections. The first deals with the history of digital TV, including some detail on the history behind television itself. Next there is an overview of television policy, how it has developed and the various models applied at a policy level to the industry. There follows a detailed review of policy on digital TV in the US, Japan and Europe, with a particular view to explaining the current landscapes. Finally, there is a detailed review of the DVB Project's work in the area, with special treatment of all the DVB standards and the overall structure and philosophy behind all this work. This final section covers nearly half the book, and explains the history, philosophy and technology behind DVB, and the related ISO/IEC MPEG standards.
The authors have made complete and thorough investigations of all policy aspects of digital TV around the world, and their treatment of the DVB project and its work is extensive. Although individual sections are consistent in the treatment of their subject matter, the overall structure of the book appears to lack coherence. The writing style is clear rather than engaging. Nevertheless, it is a valuable information source, and rare in that its target audience is policy-makers and high-level engineers – unlike the significant number of other books on digital TV topics, which are mainly technically oriented.
To someone who has worked in the industry for some years, it is interesting to see an outside perspective on one's activities. The book clarified for me the detailed policy of the US and Japan, and helped to explain their respective positions on digital TV.
Digital Video Broadcasting: Technology,
Standards and Regulations
R. de Bruin and J. Smits
Hardbound volume of 315 pages
Artech House Books, London, 1999
Ref: ISBN 0-89006-743-0. Price £55.00.
Peter McAvock
Understanding optical communications
This weighty book is one of a series of "Redbooks" produced by the IBM International Technical Support Organization. It is structured in three sections dealing with "Theory and Devices", "Systems" and a series of appendices which, in themselves, constitute a primer in optical semiconductors, laser safety aspects, commu-nications networks and, for good measure, a brief optical engineer's vade mecum of useful facts and figures.
The book assumes a basic knowledge of electronic communications, and extends this into the optical world, giving a thorough conceptual treatment of the subject matter. Detailed technical descriptions and mathematical analyzes are only resorted to, where necessary to communicate a particular concept. The overall presentation is quite suitable for corporate network managers who need to extend their knowledge of optical components and technologies in order to make meaningful decisions about their use.
The book is very readable; it avoids annoying clichés and over-complex sentences. It also has a nice way of building up to its subject in each chapter. For instance, did you know that the idea of using glass fibre (not fiber!) to carry an optical communications signal originated with Alexander Graham Bell, but that the idea had to wait some 80 years before the technology caught up with it?
There are plenty of illustrative diagrams, and footnotes abound for clarification, or to place an event or technical development in its historical context. Anyone who can define systems engineering as "the gentle art of interconnecting devices in such a way that they operate together as a system to perform a useful function for somebody" must have a good grasp of his subject, and so it is.
The author is an IBM employee, and his current responsibilities are for world-wide technical support of ATM and of optical communications, architectures and standards. Perhaps fittingly for an expert on high speed networking, Mr Dutton telecommutes from his base in Sydney, Australia to IBM in North Carolina, USA.
Understanding Optical Communications
Harry J.R. Dutton
Bound volume of 760 pages
Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1998
Ref: ISBN 0-13-020141-3. Price $64.99.
Roger Miles
Mobile information systems
This book is a new edition of a similar volume published nine years ago by the same editor, John Walker, who is the well-known editor of the Artech House book series "Mobile Communications". Thus he is ideally placed to present a state-of-the-art technology overview in the field of mobile communications. To achieve this, he collaborated with 16 other co-authors, each of them a renowned expert on the particular topic covered.
Broadly speaking, the book deals with three main topics: cellular and then satellite communications, followed by Intelligent Transport Systems as a particular application. The history and background of developments like GSM and GPS are well covered. Objectives to be achieved by the European, US and Japanese research programmes on Transport Telematics are well summarized in three distinct chapters. Altogether, the book consists of 14 chapters, starting with an overview and ending with an outlook into the future. It is anticipated that the Internet will also sooner or later have a major impact on mobile communications and certain trends leading to this are already indicated.
Since mobile communications technology has progressed very fast in the last ten years, the new edition of this book retains almost nothing from its predecessor which, as a reference book, had become a kind of a best-seller in the circles of the ITS community. The reviewer wishes John Walker a similar success with this new edition.
Books of this quality and information content are indeed very rare. It is very useful to all those involved in new applications development for mobile users. Such developments can now no longer take place in isolation, and they have to use the full knowledge of what is going on elsewhere. Thus, this book offers its readers a unique opportunity to update his/her general knowledge on ITS projects and development objectives, now being pursued practically throughout the world.
Data broadcasting technology - also important for mobile communications - is almost left uncovered, but who would notice this except the broadcasters themselves? On the other hand, broadcasters have to develop their own technology now within a competitive market where data broadcast functionality can also be achieved by non-broadcast systems such as the mobile telephone and the Internet. This book gives the necessary knowledge of what is going on in the non-broadcast world, and therefore I can whole-heartedly recommend it to all those interested in the development of information services for mobile users, using more advanced means than the ones used previously. The book also confirms the emphasis now being placed on providing vehicle drivers with information on multimodal connections and public transport for changeover purposes (in addition to the more-traditional information relating just to road transport).
In conclusion, this book is well written, easy to read and it contains many valuable references for further exploration in the field of mobile telephone and ITS technologies.
Advances in Mobile Communication Systems
Edited by John Walker
Hardbound volume of 490 pages
Artech House Books, London, 1999
Ref: ISBN 0-89006-951-4. Price £55.00.
Dietmar Kopitz
ATM – foundation of broadband networks
This book is the 2nd edition of Volume 1 in a series of three. The first edition was published in 1995. Volume 1 in this series covers the basics of broadband network technology in a very detailed manner, and places ATM in the context of data transmission networks with a services integration approach.
This second edition has been upgraded with information about the latest developments in data transmission network facilities, such as Multipoint over ATM (MPOA) and LAN emulation.
A large part of the book considers network management facilities, including signalling; these are certainly sensitive elements for the set-up and interworking of networks.
The main thrust of this book is data transmission, which implies that little information is given on the specific requirements for broadcasting applications, which mainly concern high-quality audio and video signal transmission in real time. However, a complete chapter is dedicated to the mechanisms of the ATM Adaptation Layer (AAL), from a general usage approach; this layer, which is increasingly mentioned in the pages of EBU Technical Review, is necessary to allow the connection of video and audio applications to ATM networks.
ATM Volume 1: Foundation for Broadband
Networks
U. Black
Hardbound volume of 446 pages
Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1999
Ref: ISBN 0-13-083218-9.
Marc Lambreghs
DSP using C and the TMS320C31 starter kit
Digital Signal Processing (DSP) was once the province of big-budget applications like military radar and satellite communication. Then, in 1978, Texas Instruments introduced a toy which proved that DSP was viable for consumer products. Called Speech and Spell, this toy used specialized DSP hardware to synthesize some speech and was the first inexpensive DSP-based consumer product to sell well.
In the last few years, DSP has become an enabling technology for a wide variety of products. Many telephone answering machines now use it in place of analogue tape recording systems, because it increases their reliability and makes it possible to add such advanced features as fast messaging playback and random access to the messages. From PCs to car phones with handset-free dialling, any product that performs speech recognition or speech synthezis is today using DSP technology. Another widespread use of DSP technology is data compression, particularly the compression of speech and music signals.
In DSP parlance, signal processing requires the heavy use of Multiply-Accumulators (MACs). Early DSPs, such as the TMS32010 from Texas Instruments, operated at 5 MHz. Execution of a single MAC on this DSP required two instruction cycles, or 400 ns. The clock speeds of current mainstream DSPs have increased to between 50 and 200 MHz. However, their performance has increased even more than the relative clock speed would suggest, as current architectures can pack more work into an instruction cycle than earlier devices. For instance, some high-end DSP processors include two multiplication units, and compute two MACs in every instruction. Thus, at 200 MHz, each MAC pair requires only 5 ns.
Texas Instruments introduced the first- generation TM32010 DSP in 1982. The second-generation TMS32020 came along in 1985, followed by the C-MOS version, TMS320C25, in 1986 and the TMS320C50 in 1991, all within the same generation. Several versions of each of these processors, C1x, C2x, and C5x, are available with different features. These are the fixed-point processors, based on modified Harvard architecture with separate spaces for data and instructions, that allow concurrent accesses.
The TMS320C31 (the C3x and C4x are floating-point DSPs) is a true 32-bit processor that is capable of performing floating-point, integer, and logical operations. It contain 2K of on-chip memory and has a 24-bit address bus, capable of addressing 224 of memory space for program, data and I/O. With such features, the C31 is well suited for applications ranging from communication and control, to instrumentation, speech and image processing.
This book explores the third-generation TMS320C3x processor, which uses floating point instructions and new architectures that support features which facilitate the development of high-level language compilers. The C-optimizing compiler takes advantage of special features of the TMS320C3x processor, such as parallel instructions and delayed branches.
The book is written with the conviction that the principles of DSP can best be learned through interaction in a laboratory setting, appreciating the concept of DSP through real-time implementation of experimental projects.
Most chapters begin with a theoretical discussion, followed by representative examples that provide the necessary background to perform the concluding experiments. There are a total of 60 solved programming examples, using both the TMS320C3x and C code.
Chapter 1 introduces the tools through three examples. These tools include an assembler and a debugger that are provided with the DSP Starter Kit (DSK). The DSK board connects to the parallel printer port of the PC, through DB25 cable provided with the DSK
Chapter 2 covers the architecture and the instructions that are available for the TMS320C3x processor. Chapter 3, through several programming examples, illustrates input and output (I/O) with the two-input analogue interface chip (AIC) on the DSK board.
Chapter 4 introduces the z-transform and discusses finite impulse response (FIR) filters and the effect of window functions on these filters. Chapter 6 covers the development of the fast Fourier transform (FFT), and Chapter 7 demonstrates the usefulness of the adaptive filter for a number of applications with the least mean square (LMS). And, finally, Chapter 8 discusses a number of DSP applications.
A disk included with this book contains all the programs discussed in the text.
Digital Signal Processing:
Laboratory Experiments using C and TMS320C31 DSK
R. Chassaing
Hardbound volume of 322 pages
John Wiley and Sons, UK, 1999
Ref: ISBN 0-471-29362-8. Price £45.50.
Mostafa Bibak
Eutelsat W earthstations
This new EBU specification, which applies to stations transmitting and receiving Eurovision digital carriers, is being released so as to give information to earthstation owners when procuring or updating earthstations. Intended as a guide, this document specifies the part of the EBU station that is procured by the broadcaster, and provides information for the establishment of an earthstation specification.
Some requirements are mandatory and must be met by an earthstation before approval can be given for it to access the Eurovision system. Many of these mandatory requirements are with reference to Eutelsat Document EESS 400 - Minimum Technical and Operational Requirements for Earthstations Transmitting to Leased Capacity in the Eutelsat Space Segment. Future revisions of that document may change the status of Eutelsat's requirements, or introduce new ones. It is the intention of the EBU to publicise such changes by means of amendments to the present document.
The document is organized into eight chapters and an appendix. The first chapter describes the general considerations for earthstations operating in the Eurovision network and Chapter 2 looks at system design considerations.
The next four chapters cover antenna and feed systems, RF transmit and receive chains, and baseband equipment. Chapter 7 deals with receive-only stations and the concluding chapter is devoted to digital SNG and transportable earthstations.
The useful Appendix lists the minimum values of satellite G/T, CT, EIRP at saturation and CR in the direction of locations where an EBU earthstation is planned to operate – from Reykjavik (Iceland) to Baghdad (Iraq), and Moscow (Russia) to Santa Cruz (Canary Islands)
Essential characteristics for a Eutelsat
W earthstation having the
minimum required performance for Eurovision
EBU document tech 3288
EBU, Geneva, 1999
Price: 35 CHF.
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