Final report

Simulation of video over DVB-H and

QoE analyses

Author : Arulnambi Nandagoban1

Supervisors: Gerardo Rubino2 , Kamal Singh3
Project Advisor :Antoine Chevreuil4
Laboratory: INRIA, Rennes
Team: INRIA/DIONYSOS5

Master of science - Telecommunication and Signal processing

ESIEE,Paris

30 June, 2011

1 Arulnambi.Nandagoban@inria.fr, INRIA, Rennes

2 gerardo.rubino@inria.fr, INRIA, Rennes
3 kamal.singh@inria.fr, INRIA, Rennes
4 a.chevreuil@esiee.fr
5 http://ralyx.inria.fr/2007/Raweb/dionysos/uid0.html
 Abstract

The Personal Mobile Television is a commercial reality in many countries, and is becoming a
reality in other places. The Quality of Experience (QoE)actually delivered to end users will be
a key criteria for the adoption of this new service. In order to evaluate it, a QoE analysing
tool called Pseudo Subjective Quality Assessment (PSQA) is used in this project to evaluate the
video quality with the simulation of video over DVB-H.
DVB-H transmitter and receiver in MATLAB are implemented in this project. The imple-
mented DVB-H transmitter and receiver include Forward Error Correction (FEC)in the link
layer and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in the physical layer as the im-
portant parameters. A channel model is implemented in the physical layer to represent the real
environment with the parameters like distance,speed of the terminal and type of environment.
The simulation studies is made to optimize the Digital video broadcasting for handheld terminal
(DVB-H) parameter with a novel approach of QoE using PSQA.
Contents

1 Introduction 4
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Internship Objective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 DVB-H system 6
2.1 Link layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.1 Forward Error Correction mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.2 Time slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Physical layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.1 OFDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.2 Channel model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3 Quality of Experience and PSQA 11

3.1 Quality of Experience (QoE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.2 PSQA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

4 Simulink and Matlab 13

4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2 Other features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5 DVB-H Simulator model 14

5.1 Simulator overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2 Simulator model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.3 Simulator implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.4 Physical layer transmitter model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.4.1 External encoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.4.2 External interleaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.4.3 Internal encoder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.4.4 Internal interleaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.4.5 Mapper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.4.6 Pilot signals insertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.4.7 OFDM and Guard interval insertion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.5 Physical layer receiver model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.5.1 Channel estimation and equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.6 Link layer model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.6.1 Decapsulation methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.7 Channel model implemented . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

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 5.8 Problem faced and assumptions made . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.9 Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

6 Simulation results and analysis 24

6.1 Simulation parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.2 Simulation results analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.2.1 Bit Error Rate analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.2.2 Packet errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

7 Conclusion 29

8 Suggestions for the future work 30

9 Glossary 31
Appendix
. . .A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Appendix.A.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Appendix.A.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Appendix.A.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

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List of Figures

2.1 Functional block diagram of DVB-H system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.2 Link layer encapsulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3 Time slicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.4 DVB-H transmission scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.5 Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.6 QPSK,16QAM and 64 QAM mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.7 Urban and rural channel environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3.1 QoE and QoS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3.2 PSQA training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3 PSQA utilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

4.1 Simulink example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

5.1 Global simulator model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

5.2 Software hierarchiel model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.3 Physical layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5.4 Continual pilot tone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.5 Scattered pilot tone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.6 Section header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.7 TS header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.8 Section erasure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.9 TS erasure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.10 Typical urban profile (TU6) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.11 Bit Error Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

6.1 Bit Error Rate after viterbi 16 QAM CR=3/4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

6.2 Bit Error Rate after viterbi 16 QAM CR=2/3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6.3 Bit Error Rate after viterbi 64 QAM CR=2/3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.4 Bit Error Rate after viterbi QPSK CR=2/3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.5 Bit Error Rate after RS decoder 16 QAM CR=3/4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.6 Bit Error Rate after RS decoder 16 QAM CR=2/3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.7 Bit Error Rate after RS decoder 64 QAM CR=2/3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.8 Bit Error Rate after RS decoder QPSK CR=2/3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.9 IP packet Error Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

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Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Introduction
The development of wideband telecommunications system is a modern trend in the current
telecommunication industry. The multimedia services like video streaming and television ser-
vices require high bandwidth. DVB-H [1] is one of the system which satisfies this requirement.
It achieves various telecommunication challenges such as achieving high data rates in wireless
networks, providing the power saving options to the mobile receivers and the design of bandwidth-
efficient Single frequency networks terrestrial (SFN). DVB-H is an evolution of DVB-T [2]. The
intention of its design is to improve performance in mobile environments, to add flexibility in
network planning and to enable efficient power control in handheld receivers. Since the data is
carried in Internet Protocol (IP) packets, it is easy to adopt various services other than video
streaming. The television services are transmitted over DVB-H using the existing cellular net-
work as a downlink. The challenge faced by the service providers is to find a best combination of
DVB-H parameters to achieve robust transmission over the channel. A lot of research was done
with different approaches to find the best combination of DVB-H parameters. Our approach is to
optimize the parameters with QoE. The QoE is analysed based on human perception of different
services like video,audio etc. Here in this project, Pseudo Subjective Quality Assessment is used
to analyse the video quality and to provide the feedback in real time.
In this report, the focus will be on presenting the link layer and physical layer parameters of
DVB-H. Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of DVB-H system, presenting its link layer, physical
layer parameters and the new features added in these layers.The encapsulation methods and
different channel model for DVB-H are discussed in detail. Chapter 3 describes about the QoE
and PSQA. Chapter 4 gives an overview of Matlab and Simulink. In chapter 5, the simulator
design and its software implementation are elucidated in detail. The importance of simulating
DVB-H and problem faced are also discussed. Simulation results are interpreted and analysed in
the chapter 6. Finally, conclusions and possibilities for further research are presented in chapters
7 and 8.

1.2 Motivation
In order to achieve success for DVB-H, or video broadcasting in general, the system parameters
need to be adapted for the QoE to be optimised. Different coding, interleaving and modulation
makes the amount of parameter combinations huge and these have to be critically evaluated

4
before building the networks. There are around 144000 combinations possible with these param-
eters. At the physical layer one of the most important research objectives is to find appropriate
channel models to be abale to analyse different parameters and help in network planning.To
optimize these parameters different approaches were taken into account and the one,which is
proposed by DIONYSOS1 is to adapt these parameters based on QoE feedback.

1.3 Internship Objective

Since the combinations of physical and link layer parameter is extremely large, to analyse these
parameter is made easy by building a computer simulator model of DVB-H system. The ob-
jective of this project work is to build a simulator, validate it with specification standard and
finally to study the video streaming over this simulator for QoE analyses using PSQA tool. Three
phases of work are proposed to have a best strategy to finish off this project. The phase 1 is to
dedicated to establish state of the art and development of this software model. The phase 2 is
planned for validation and simultion work and the phase 3 is to work on the results obtained for
QoE analyses. This work also gives the chance to evaluate the Forward Error Correction (FEC)
performance of link layer and power saving mechanisim.

The main objective of this internship is to build a DVB-H simulator and after, study the
video quality over it.

1 A team of INRIA,Rennes which works on different problems related to the design and the analysis of com-

munication services.

5
Chapter 2

DVB-H system

DVB-H is an ETSI specification for delivering broadcast services to battery-powered handheld

receivers[1]. DVB-H is a evolution of DVB-T specification for digital terrestrial television. Com-
pared to DVB-T, television services to handheld devices are more complex from technical point
of view. The constraints starts right from the size of antenna to power capability of handheld
devices. The major constraints in handheld devices are mobility and its reception environment.
They expect the reception in all types of environment like indoor,outdoor etc. The other problem
is the power consumption which restricts the handheld capability for video services.

Figure 2.1: Functional block diagram of DVB-H system

The Figure 2.1 shows the functional block diagram of the DVB-H system. The DVB-
H standard addresses the above stated problems by adding a number of features to DVB-T
standard.DVB-H adds functional changes in the link and physical layers while it is backward
compatible with DVB-T. In the link layer, DVB-H has two new features with respect to DVB-T:
Time Slicing and Multiprotocol Encapsulation Forward Error Correction (MPE-FEC). In the
physical layer, DVB-H also adds some features DVB-T: DVB-H Signaling and 4K-Mode OFDM.
A detailed overview of these parameters is presented in the following sections.

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2.1 Link layer
2.1.1 Forward Error Correction mechanism
Forward Error Correction is used in the link layer for correcting the errors which occur due to the
radio environment and its interference. The link layer packet encoding, encapsulation, decoding
and decapsulation are illustrated in Figure 2.2. The IP datagrams are arranged column-wise into
the Application data table (ADT) of the MPE-FEC frame. To create MPE-FEC, IP packets
are filled into an (NX191) matrix where each cell of the matrix hosts one byte of information.
According to the standard the number of rows in the matrix, i.e. N can be selected from the
following values: 256, 512, 768 or 1024. The ADT is then encoded row-wise with Reed-Solomon
RS(255,191) and concatenated such that the final size of the matrix is of size (NX255). The
ADT need not be completely filled. The unfilled part of the ADT is called padding. The padding
allows rate control and preventing fragmentation of IP packet between two MPE-FEC frames.
All the 64 columns of RSDT need not be transmitted, i.e. the RS data table (RSDT) may be
punctured. This allows control of code rate[1]. The frame is divided into MPE-sections, with one
IP datagram as payload, and MPE-FEC-sections with one RS column as payload. Each section
is protected with a CRC-32. The sections are transmitted in a MPEG-2 transport stream (TS).
The decoding is suggested to be erasure correction based on reliability information provided by
the CRC. If the CRC fails, the bytes of the section are marked as unreliable. The reliability of
each symbol is indicated in the Erasure Info Table (EIT). As erasure correction is twice as strong
as conventional error correction, the RS(255,191) is able to correct 64 erasures on each row of
the MPE-FEC frame.

Figure 2.2: Link layer encapsulation

2.1.2 Time slicing

Time slicing is a mechanism which reduces average power consumption of a DVB-H receiver
significantly based on time division multiplexing. To reduce the power consumption in mobile
handheld terminals, the service data is time-sliced (i.e segmented in time) and then sent through
the channel as bursts at a significantly higher bit rate compared to the bit rate of the audio-
visual service. Time-slicing enables a receiver to stay active only for a small fraction of the time,

7
while receiving bursts of a requested service. It significantly reduces the power consumption used
for radio reception parts.

Figure 2.3: Time slicing

Figures 2.3 compares the services provided in typical DVB-T and DVB-H channels. It also
shows the backward compatibility of DVB-H with DVB-T system. Time-slicing also supports a
smooth seamless handover by accomplishing the changing of the reception from one transport
stream to another during the off-time between bursts.

2.2 Physical layer

The physical layer of DVB-T is adopted for DVB-H with some additional features like 4K mode in
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM),Transmission Parameter Signalling(TPS)
etc.,The transmission scheme of DVB-H is shown in Figure 2.4.

Figure 2.4: DVB-H transmission scheme

2.2.1 OFDM
OFDM concept is to segment the bandwidth into several sub-channels such that these narrow
sub-channels can have flat fading. The feature of orthogonal sub-channels makes OFDM have
a high spectral efficiency. Cyclic extension is a copy of the last or the forward part of each
OFDM symbol. It prevents inter symbol interference (ISI) and inter carrier interference (ICI),
and makes the transmitted signal periodic. The new 4k mode [1] is added in the DVB-T standard
for OFDM transmission. DVB-T already has 2k and 8k mode. The 2k,4k and 8k refers to the

8
number of carriers used in the OFDM transmission. The diiference between 2k and 8k is the
transmitter distance and speed of the mobile terminal for a SFN. The 2k mode of OFDM allows
reception for short distance for fast moving terminal, whereas 8k mode allows long distance for
slow moving mobile terminals.The 4k mode provides the tradeoff between these two modes of
OFDM by allowing a considerable distance for fast moving mobile terminals by giving more
flexibility in the transmission of DVB content.[3]

Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix

While using OFDM, the distortion caused by ISI and ICI.To solve this problem, an empty Guard
interval (GI)between two consecutive symbols is added. If the length of GI is longer than the
delay spread of channel response, the next symbol doesnt interfere with the previous one. But
if symbol boundary estimation doesnt precisely locate the symbol, the empty GI destroys the
orthogonality and introduces ICI. In order to prevent this situation, a mechanism is proposed to
copy the last part of an OFDM symbol into the empty GI, which is so called Cyclic Prefix (CP)
as shown in Figure 2.5

Figure 2.5: Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix

Other features

Randomiser disperses the energy in order to obtain an evenly distributed energy within the chan-
nel and transport multiplex adaptation using the DVB randomisation polynomial 1 + x14 + x15
and disperses except the sync byte (0x47) of the TS packet[1].
Reed-solomon encoder generates reed solomon packets based on the RS(204,188) code with
code generator polynomial galois field and field generator polynomialp(x) = x8 + x4 + x3 + x2 + 1.
It adds 16 parity bytes in the end of each information data and it can correct upto 8 error bytes[1].
Outer and inner interleaver performs the DVB outer interleaving function with depth I=12
and bit interleaver(inner interleaver) concatenated with a symbol interleaver in a two-step pro-
cess. If a hierarchical system is selected then the two streams are merged at this point using a
modified interleaving equation. If required, DVB-H provides in-depth interleaving as specified by
the DVB standard. Both interleaver are used to reduce the impact of burst errors by spreading
them in the channel[1].
QAM mapper which allows to perform QAM constellation mapping using the mapping scheme
specified by DVB for QPSK, QAM16 or QAM64. It outputs I/Q QAM values to the FFT Fast
fourier transform core as given in Figure 2.6.

9
 Figure 2.6: QPSK,16QAM and 64 QAM mapping

2.2.2 Channel model

Figure 2.7: Urban and rural channel environments

The users of mobile TV Television may not watch the video for more than ten minutes
continuously. There are many places where these users watch TV on bus or the train (reception
in fast moving terminals), bars or restaurants (reception indoor)[4]. The proposed channel model
for DVB-H are urban, rural and indoor environments as shown in the Figure 2.7. These channels
are modeled using rayleigh and rician distribution as per the type of environment.

10
Chapter 3

Quality of Experience and PSQA

3.1 Quality of Experience (QoE)

Figure 3.1: QoE and QoS

Quality of Experience (QoE) is the overall acceptability of an application or service,

as perceived subjectively by the end-user [5]. It also noted that QoE includes complete end-to-
end system effects (client, terminal, network, services infrastructure etc) and is influnced by the
context and users expectations. QoE related to the QoS in many context but also differs in
some ways. Mostly QoS depends on the objective analysis of the service like delay, errors and
bandwidth of a network when it is for a network system. But QoE deals with the user experience
as a function of network parameters, content and type of delivery of the service. It is interesting
to note that more and more video service providers taking attention of the user experience to
improve their service. For mobile TV transmission, the signals degrade with respect to the
transmission channel by introducing errors into the signal. Moreover, the video compression
made used for reducing the transmission bandwidth are the major aspects which affects the QoE
of a end user.

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3.2 PSQA

Figure 3.2: PSQA training

Figure 3.3: PSQA utilization

The assessment made by objective video quality analysing tools are not same as the human
perceived vedio quality. Whereas the subjective quality assessments are expensive in both cost
and time. A novel method proposed to assess the video quality is PSQA. It uses Random Neural
Network (RNN) for learning the examples obtained from the subjective tests. It is cost effective
and simple to use. The methodology for the PSQA design and usage is given in Figure 3.2 and
3.3. The idea behind its design is modelling a relation between the network parameters which
cause the impact on the video quality with the QoE results obtained from the human observers
who evaluate the sample videos. After that, the trained PSQA can be used in many real time
applications to measure the subjective video quality.

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Chapter 4

Simulink and Matlab

4.1 Overview
Simulink is a plaftform for multidomain simulation and model-based design of dynamic sys-
tems. It provides an interactive Graphical User Interface (GUI) and lets you choose between the
built-in libraries to design, simulate, implement, and test various system like signal processing,
communication and mechanical systems. It is integrated with MATLAB.
Matlab1 is a programming language which allows to perform various numerical computations,
data analysis and access. A simple example of Minimum shift keying (MSK) modulator model
is shown in Figure 4.1

Figure 4.1: Simulink example

4.2 Other features

Simulink has a lot of desirable features as compared to many other simulation tools. Some
of its features are used in this project. It allows to store the values of the variable in the
workspace which can be retrieved for the later use. It uses subsystem methodology which allows
to encapsulate a group of blocks into a single block for reducing the model managing complexity.
Moreover, the functions from different programming languages like C, C++, Python can be
called using user defined function block of simulink. In this project work,the link layer part is
designed using Matlab code and the physical layer part is modeled using Simulink.

1 www.mathworks.com

13
Chapter 5

DVB-H Simulator model

This describes about the simulator modelling with simulink and Matlab code. In section 5.1, a
global architecture of the simulator is described. In the following sections, the developed unused
simulink model is presented. In section 5.4, the physical layer is explained with respective matlab
code.

5.1 Simulator overview

DVB-H simulator is developed to evaluate the network parameters which affect the video quality
in DVB-H.It is developed using simulink and matlab.The physical layer part is modeled using
simulink and link layer functions are developed using matlab codes.The existing communication
blocks of simulink are enhanced to adopt DVB-H standard and some new functions are developed
to achieve the full functionality of DVB-H.In the following sections,the simulator model design
strategies and its implementations are discussed in detail.

5.2 Simulator model

Figure 5.1: Global simulator model

The global model for the simulator is divided into mainly two parts namely DVB-H simulator
and integration of PSQA module as shown in Figure 5.1. As for DVB-H simulator, a simple and

14
effiencient model is developed by including all the features of link layer and physical layer includ-
ing the time slicing in link layer, randomiser and pilot insertion in physical layer. Considering
the main objective, the focus is on the link layer for analysing the link layer parameters. The
parameters needed to evaluate the video quality are the frame errors and IP packet loss in the
link layer.

5.3 Simulator implementation

Figure 5.2: Software hierarchiel model

The software implentation is made as shown in Figure 5.2. Except the link layer part of the
trnsmitter and error calculation part, all other parts iterates for each burst in the chain.

5.4 Physical layer transmitter model

During the development phase of the work, the communication toolbox of simulink is used to
model the physical layer of DVB-H. This model supports 3 types of modulations, 3 modes of
OFDM, all values of code rate in convolutional coding and all proportion of guard interval
inserion. During validation, due to problems like data syncronization and delay compensation
of simulink blocks, a new model is coded in Matlab. So this model is used for the simulation
studies. Some example codes for blocks like RS encoder and decoder, convolutional ineterleaver
can be found in Appendix.
The simulator has all the DVB-H processing functionality and it consists of several commu-
nication and signal processing blocks as shown in Figure 5.3.
1. External encoder (RS encoder)
2. External interleaver (Convolutional interleaver,I=12)

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 3. Internal encoder(Punctured convolutional code)
4. Internal interleaver
5. Mapper

6. OFDM and Guard Interval Insertion

5.4.1 External encoder

The encoding and decoding is done with Reed-solomon coding. RS(204,188,T=8). It adds 16
parity bytes at the end of each information byte of the TS packets. It is noted in [2] that input
BER1 required in the input of this coder is 2x104 . In average this coder can correct upto 20
million errors for each error it fails to correct. The following lines of code which are used to
implement RS encoder and decoder found inside the function rsendec.m.

5.4.2 External interleaver

Transmission errors corrupt many bits in the data stream. A convolutional interleaver rearranges
the transmitted packets with the aim to increase the efficiency of the ReedSolomon decoding by
spreading the burst errors introduced by the channel over a longer time. External interleaver
inserts 11 bytes from other TS packets between bytes from the same TS packet (at the input).
This allows burst errors of maximum 12x8=96 bytes to be corrected because only eight or fewer
byte error per TS packet are obtained after the deinterleaver in the DVB receiver/decoder. These
error can be corrected by the RS decoder with the efficiency of correcting 8 bytes.

5.4.3 Internal encoder

Internal encoder uses convolutional coding in addition with the ReedSolomon coder and external
interleaver to improve the transmission effiency against errors. It is based on a mother convo-
lutional code of rate 1/2 with 64 states (generator polynomials of the mother code are G1 =
171OCT for X output and G2 = 133OCT for Y output). The puncturing is made if required
and it reduces the redundancy of the mother code. It results the code rates 2/3, 3/4, 5/6 and
7/8. For example for 2/3, puncturing for each 3 bit input , it outputs only 2 bits. It is a tradeoff
between the bandwidth efficiency and redundancy of the system.

5.4.4 Internal interleaver

Two separate interleaving processes are used to reduce the bad impact of burst errors, one
operating on bits (bit interleaver) and another on groups of bits (symbol interleaver). Depending
on the modulation mode QPSK, 16QAM or 64QAM the bit interleaver comprises two, four or
six paths. An input stream is demultiplexed into v sub-streams, where v = 2 for QPSK, v = 4
for 16-QAM, and v = 6 for 64-QAM [1]. Three modes are defined for the COFDM multicarrier
method: 2K with 1705 carriers, 4k with 3405 and 8K with 6817 carriers. The use of the symbol
interleaver is to map v bit words to each OFDM symbol. The interleaver output data words are
brought together in 12 blocks of 126 bits in 2K mode,in 24 blocks of 126 bits in 4k mode and in
48 blocks of 126 bits in 8K mode. The symbol interleaver processes the bit groups to generate
COFDM symbols.
1 Bit Error Rate

16
 17

Figure 5.3: Physical layer

5.4.5 Mapper
The mapper block used here can perform three types of modultion QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM. It
uses the rectangular QAM block and in the demodulation, it uses the variance obtained from
the modulator block to make decision.

5.4.6 Pilot signals insertion

There are two types of pilot tone found in the DVB-H. They are continual and scattered pilots.
The continual pilots are found in Table.7 of [2]. The indices of pilot tones in OFDM can be seen
in the Figure 5.4. Continual refers to the pilot tones which appear in the every OFDM symbols.
In addition to continual pilot tones, scattered pilot tones appear in the OFDM symbol as well
in the pattern given in the Figure 5.5.

Figure 5.4: Continual pilot tone

5.4.7 OFDM and Guard interval insertion

OFDM modulation consists of N closely spaced orthogonal carriers of duration T0 (each one
is modulated with a conventional modulation scheme like QPSK, 16-QAM or 64QAM), with a
spacing of 1/T0 between two consecutive carriers. Increasing the number of carriers does not
modify the payload bit rate, which remains constant. In DVB-T OFDM uses 2048,4096 or 8192
carriers (2K ,4k and8K mode). Every OFDM block is added with cyclic prefix in the end of the
block. The cyclic prefix serves as a guard interval and eliminates the intersymbol interference
from the previous symbol. Insertion of the guard interval extends symbol duration by 1/4,
1/8, 1/16 or 1/32 to give the total symbol duration TS . By the end of the guard interval, all
echoes caused by multipath reception, reception of other transmitters in the SFN (SFN, Single
Frequency Network) or Doppler effects in mobile reception, i.e. all fading effects, must have
settled or decayed.

18
 Figure 5.5: Scattered pilot tone

5.5 Physical layer receiver model

The blocks in the transmitter are reversed in the receiver part. The channel estimation and
viterbi decoder parts are added in addition to the transmitter model in the receiver. Hard
decision is choosen for the moment in the receiver for demodulations. The delay is calculated for
each combination of the above stated parameter for the viterbi decoding and error calculations.
The BER calculations are made in two places of the receiver. One after the viterbi decoding and
one at the end of the transmitter-receiver chain. These values are used for the validation of the
simulator.

5.5.1 Channel estimation and equalization

It is well known that the wireless channel causes an arbitrary time dispersion, attenuation, and
phase shift in the received signal. the use of OFDM and a cyclic prefix mitigates the effect of
time dispersion. The channel estimation methods proposed here will make use of pilot signal to
estimate the time-variant channel response in the frequency domain. Here in this simulator, two
types of channel estimation techniques are used. As we know, the received signal is a filtered
and noise-corrupted version of the transmitted sequence:

rk = sk ck + nk (5.1)

The multipath channel causes frequency selectivity and inter symbol interference. Equalization
can reduce the inter symbol interference and noise effects for the better demodulations. The
purpose of equalization is to remove the effect of multipath effect from the received signals. It is
done by estimating the channel ck and dividing the received signal with the estimated channel
response cke . This simple equalizer is implemented in the model. The estimation is performed
using the boosted pilot signals rkp .

Method 1:
The steps of channel estimation and equalization using method 1 are given by

Taking IFFT of rkp

19
 Filling zeros in the place of useful carriers
Taking FFT
Divide received signal in frequency domain with interpolated rkp

Method 2:
This method uses both the continual and scattered pilots for the channel estimation i.e channel
estimation is done in both frequency and time axis. For this method atleast 10 OFDM symbols
are used for interpolation. The steps of channel estimation and equalization using method 2 are
given by

Taking IFFT of rkp

Linear interpolation in time and frequency axis
Taking FFT
Divide received signal in frequency domain with interpolated rkp

Both methods are implemented but the method 1 is used for simulation studies.

5.6 Link layer model

The link layer model is developed using matlab code. It performs the MPE encapsulation to
till TS encapsulation. The headers for MPE sections and TS packets are made as per the
specifications [1]. The MPE encapsulation is made as per the Figure 2.2. For the decoding,section
erasure chosen.

Burst formation
In this simulator model, many assumption were made with respect to the burst formation. Here,
the duration of one burst is in the range of 0.5 seconds. For the given IP packets, 0.5 seconds
corresponds to 30 IP packets. A simple study is made on FEC percentage with respect to
uncorrected IP packets. Since, the objective of this project has less interest in time slicing, we
consider this assumption.

MPE and TS encapsulation

To make the decoder more efficient, many useful information are sent through headers of section
and TS headers. The Figures 5.6 and 5.7 show the informations contained in the section and
TS headers. The section header informations like section length, index information and synchro-
nization byte are used to place the IP and FEC bytes in the corresponding positions in ADT and
RS table. The same way, TS header contains informations like syncronization bytes and section
start indicator helps to decapsulate TS packets to MPE sections.

5.6.1 Decapsulation methods

There are two decapsulation and decoding methods that are proposed during the course of this
project. This methods are found more efficient with respect to [6]. A brief description and
implementation are discussed in the section erasure and TS erasure sections.

20
 Figure 5.6: Section header

Figure 5.7: TS header

Section erasure

Figure 5.8: Section erasure

In the decoding process, section erasure method is considered for the moment. The process
works as given in Figure 5.8. Section erasure is based on the CRC. A section is consider as lost
or erased when CRC fails. This is marked in EIT as unreliable symbols. Later this EIT is used
during the RS decoding process (in link layer) for the better decoding. The disadvantage of this
method is that it marks many reliable bytes as unreliable considering the CRC. There is other
method proposed by researcher to overcome this problem is TS erasure[6]. It will be discussed
in the following part of the this topic.

21
TS packet erasure
Another method in the decoding process which is implemented with respect to section erasure
is TS packet erasure. But for the moment, it is not used during the course of simulation studies.
The algorithm works as shown in the Figure 5.9. TS earsure is based on the RS decoder in the
physical layer. If RS decoder fails to retrieve the data bytes, then the corresponding TS packet
is erased and replaced with zeros. This is given as input for the proceedings steps. This method
is performed without using the CRC.

Figure 5.9: TS erasure

5.7 Channel model implemented

A profile which represents terrestrial propagation in an urban area is implemented in this simu-
lator. It has been defined by COST 207 as a typical urban (TU6) profile and is made of 6 paths
having wide dispersion in delay and relatively strong power. The profile parameters are shown
in the Figure 5.10. This channel was used to validate the simulator.

Figure 5.10: Typical urban profile (TU6)

5.8 Problem faced and assumptions made

Variable size IP packets
DVB-H works with variable size IP packets and the objective is to replicate the real demodulator.
This complicate the design of decapsulator. As we know from previous sections, most of the
addressing informations are carried by the header of the section. During transmission, if some
addressing informations are erased due to the radio channel, then it makes complication in placing
the IP datagrams in the ADT table and also in retrieving the reliability information for decoding.
So, a assumption is made which states that the section length information in the section header
is received without any errors.

22
Multipath channel model
A multipath channel model is constructed corresponding to TU6 profile but it is not used during
the course of simulations due to high frequency selectivity behaviour. A further work will devoted
to find a solution for this problem.

Long simulation time problem

During the second phase of this project, a simulink model was developed for the physical layer.
During the validation period, the problem related to data synchronization, compiler and sim-
ulation time were faced. Due to time constraint, instead of solving the problem in simulink, a
model is developed using Matlab code.

5.9 Validation
The model developed was validated before the simulation studies as per as DVB-H standard
requirements. From the Figure 5.11, it has been shown that the simulator respects the recom-
mandations of DVB-H specifications. The expectation for 16-QAM,CR=3/4 with CNR=12 dB,
DVB-T QEF or MFER 5% is achieved. Here , we can notice that the first condition is achieved.

Figure 5.11: Bit Error Rate

23
Chapter 6

Simulation results and analysis

6.1 Simulation parameters

The simulation is done with including the link layer decoding and decapsulation of 30 seconds
video. This video flux is in the form of IP packets. These IP packets are given as input to
the simulator. The important system parameters are defined before the start of the simulation.
Once the simulation is started, it takes approximately 40 minutes to complete transmitter-
receiver chain for a burst. The error analysis is made in the physical layer to confirm the proper
adaptation of the simulator to the specification and packet error statistics are calculated in the
link layer for QoE analysis. The data of this video was simulated by varying the SNR in the
Gaussian channel and with different modulation and code rate. Here, the simulation are made
with following parameters

Number of rows 256,512,768,1024

Inner code 2/3, 3/4
Modulation QPSK, 16 QAM, 64 QAM
OFDM mode 2K

6.2 Simulation results analysis

6.2.1 Bit Error Rate analysis
In DVB-H receiver chain, there are two places where BER is measured. One is after the viterbi
decoder and other one is after RS decoder. All of the measurement given in this section follows
the above statement. The impact of AWGN noise can be clearly seen in the Figures 6.1 to 6.8 .
On analysing the BER after RS decoder, we can determine the performance of the decapsulation.
Since the simulator uses the section erasure as decapsulation method, BER of 1011 is expected
after RS decoder for error free reception of IP packets. The results shown in the following figure
proves the proper working of the simulator. But,the results which are obtained cannot be used
for the QoE analyses.

24
 Figure 6.1: Bit Error Rate after viterbi 16 QAM CR=3/4

Figure 6.2: Bit Error Rate after viterbi 16 QAM CR=2/3

6.2.2 Packet errors

A packet error analysis was made based on the errors in IP packets is shown in Figure 6.9. It
is visible in this curve that higer valued SNR produces the lesser IP packet error rates. This
result is used to achieve the final goal of the project. Since, PSQA is works with function of IP
packet error rate, it is interesting to analyse this result. Due to time constraint, we stopped the
simulation only with QPSK and CR=2/3. In the future, a elaborate study will be made to have
this kind of results.

25
 Figure 6.3: Bit Error Rate after viterbi 64 QAM CR=2/3

Figure 6.4: Bit Error Rate after viterbi QPSK CR=2/3

Figure 6.5: Bit Error Rate after RS decoder 16 QAM CR=3/4

26
Figure 6.6: Bit Error Rate after RS decoder 16 QAM CR=2/3

Figure 6.7: Bit Error Rate after RS decoder 64 QAM CR=2/3

27
Figure 6.8: Bit Error Rate after RS decoder QPSK CR=2/3

Figure 6.9: IP packet Error Rate

28
Chapter 7

Conclusion

The main objective of this thesis work is to develop a DVB-H simulator. In order to develop this
simulator, Matlab has been proposed as a software platform, section erasure has been proposed as
decapsulation and decoding method. The goal of this project is achieved by sucessfully designing
the simulator. The problems like getting higher BER values when using urban model couldnt
be resolved due to time constraint to finish the project.
The application presented allows simulation of the DVB-H transmission in OFDM mode
2k,4k and 8k with QPSK,16QAM and 64QAM along with error corrections. Moreover, it will
contribute to the video quality analyses based on the QoE using PSQA tool.

The BER dependencies after viterbi and after RS decoder for the AWGN channel was compared
with referenced measured values. The variation between the referenced measured value and the
actual simualtion results turned out to be good.

29
Chapter 8

Suggestions for the future work

The section erasure method adds too much unnecessary erasures, resulting in failure of decoding
more often than necessary. Most of the symbols, marked as erasure by CRC decoder are actually
received correctly [6]. So, TS erasure method can be build in the link layer of the receiver for the
comparison with the section erasure using PSQA. It is interesting to study the different types
equalizer and its impact on the quality of video. A discussion on different decoding methods and
study can be made for the best analysis of QoE.

30
Chapter 9

Glossary

QoE Quality of Experience

PSQA Pseudo Subjective Quality Assessment

FEC Forword Error Correction
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

DVB-H Digital Video Broadcasting for handheld device

SFN Single Frequency Network
DVB-T Digital Video Broadcasting terresrial
MPE Multiprotocol Encapsulation

ADT Application Data Table

RSDT Reed Solomon Data Table
CRC Cyclic redundancy check
TS Transport Stream

EIT Erasure Info Table

TPS Transmission Parameter Signalling
ICI Inter Carrier Interference

GI Guard Interval
CP Cyclic Prefix
QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
QPSK Quaddrature Phase Shift Keying

FFT Fast Fourier Transform

TV Television

31
 RNN Random Neural Network
GUI Graphical User Interface
MSK Minimum Shift Keying
BER Bit Error Rate
SNR Signal to Noise Ratio
dB Decibel
QEF Quasi Error-Free
AWGN Additive White Gaussian Noise
SER Symbol error rate
MFER MPE-FEC Frame Error Rate

Appendix A
Appendix A.1
The codes for RS encoder and decoder can be found in the following lines:
f u n c t i o n r s o u t=r s e n d e c ( d a t a i n , t x r x )
i f ( t x r x ==10)
% C r e a t e ReedSolomon e n c o d e r o b j e c t .
enc = f e c . r s e n c ( 2 5 5 , 2 3 9 ) ;
enc . ShortenedLength = 5 1 ;
d a t a i n 1=r e s h a p e ( d a t a i n , 1 8 8 , l e n g t h ( d a t a i n ) / 1 8 8 ) ;
r s o u t 1 = encode ( enc , d a t a i n 1 ) ;
r s o u t=r e s h a p e ( r s o u t 1 , numel ( r s o u t 1 ) , 1 ) ;
%r s o u t=r e s h a p e ( code , 2 0 4 s z ( 2 ) , 1 ) ;
e l s e i f ( t x r x ==01)
d a t a i n 1=r e s h a p e ( d a t a i n , 2 0 4 , l e n g t h ( d a t a i n ) / 2 0 4 ) ;
dec=f e c . r s d e c ( 2 5 5 , 2 3 9 ) ;
dec . ShortenedLength = 5 1 ;
[ code , cnumerr , c c o d e ] = decode ( dec , d a t a i n 1 ) ;
r s o u t=r e s h a p e ( code , numel ( code ) , 1 ) ;
end
end

Appendix A.2
The source code for internal interleaver can be found in the following lines:
f u n c t i o n [ o u t s y m i n t z e r o p a d ] =sym intv new ( y , r a t e i d , mode , s y m t a b l e , t x r x )
i =1;
j =0;
out sym int = [ ];
s w i t c h ( mode )

32
 case 2
n c a r =1512;
case 4
n c a r =3024;
case 8
n c a r =6048;
end
switch ( rateid )
case {1 ,2}
m=2;
case {3 ,4 ,7}
m=4;
case {5 ,6}
m=6;
end
n=m n c a r ;

i f ( t x r x ==10)
z e r o p a d=nrem ( l e n g t h ( y ) , n ) ;
r =[y ; z e r o s ( nrem ( l e n g t h ( y ) , n ) , 1 ) ] ;
w h i l e ( i<=l e n g t h ( r ) / n )
x=r ( j +1: i n ) ;
i n t o u t=i n t r l v ( x , s y m t a b l e ) ;
o u t s y m i n t =[ o u t s y m i n t ; i n t o u t ] ;
j=i n ;
i=i +1;
end
e l s e i f ( t x r x ==01)
w h i l e ( i<=l e n g t h ( y ) / n )
x=y ( j +1: i n ) ;
i n t o u t=d e i n t r l v ( x , s y m t a b l e ) ;
o u t s y m i n t =[ o u t s y m i n t ; i n t o u t ] ;
z e r o p a d =0;
j=i n ;
i=i +1;
end
%b i t i n t l v o u t=b i t i n t l v o u t 1 ( 1 : l e n g t h ( b i t i n t l v o u t 1 ) b i t z e r o 1 ) ;
end

Appendix A.3
The codes shown below encapsultes IP packets with MPE header.
f u n c t i o n [ m p e f e c c r c 2 ]= m p e f e c s e c t i o n ( f e c s e c , n , p a d c o l )
m=0;
p=1;

j j =1;
mpe fec crc2 =[];

33
mpe fec crc =[];
s z f e c=l e n g t h ( f e c s e c ) ;

w h i l e ( (m<=s z f e c n)&&(p<=( s z f e c /n)))&& ( j j <=l e n g t h ( p a d c o l ) )

f e c 1=f e c s e c (m+1:pn , : ) ;
l =1;
w h i l e l <=64

mpe h=m p e f e c h e a d e r 1 ( n , l , 6 4 , p a d c o l ( j j ) ) ;
m p e f e c =[mpe h ; f e c 1 ( : , l ) ] ;
m p e f e c c r c 1=crc32compute ( m p e f e c ) ;
m p e f e c c r c 2 =[ m p e f e c c r c 2 ; m p e f e c c r c 1 ] ;
l=l +1;

end
m=pn ;
p=p+1;
j j = j j +1;

end
end

34
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[4] H. Knoche and J. D. McCarthy. Mobile users needs and expectations of future multimedia
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