HORIZON

Objectives

The Horizon project consists of the elaboration of a new product line optimised for the satellite distribution of Terrestrial TV and Mobile TV multiplexes to broadcast towers. The new products will be developed with the following objectives in mind:

• Reduction of the cost of a typical network deployment,
• Improvement of the bandwidth usage those applications,
• Added-value features for those networks,
• Having a coherent portfolio to address most of the typical deployments.

The phase 1 of the Horizon project consists of developing the base platforms needed to efficiently distribute mobile TV or terrestrial TV signals from a head-end to broadcast towers.

The project is phased according to three main releases:

• Release 2 aims at developing the various building blocks needed to propose a coherent range of solutions for Mobile TV and Terrestrial TV. It focuses on news products and new platforms with base functionalities.
• Release 3 aims at adding security features to products elaborated in release 2. Content protection is indeed a key sales enabler.Release 3 also focuses on extending the applicability range of release 2 products by making them compliant with new standards.
• Release 4 aims at integrating added-value features in Release 3 products. The main goal of those new features is to optimize the use of the satellite bandwidth and to make products complaints with a wider range of setups.

Challenges

This project addresses one key issue mainly: the deployment and operation of a Digital Terrestrial TV network or Mobile TV network is not cost-effective if classical satellite modulator and demodulator are used.

More precisely, the issues are:

• Several multiplexes often need to be distributed in parallel to the same tower, requiring as many modulators in the head-end and as many demodulators in the receiver
• Additional functions are often needed on the transmission itself, requiring their integration in the satellite receiver itself for cost reduction.
• When multiple multiplexes are distributed over a country, the amount of data (especially in terrestrial TV) justifies implementing bandwidth optimisation measures.
• In the tower, several functionalities can be merged together to reduce the cost of deployment.

Plan

The Prior Work of the project started in May 2008.

The actual kick-off of the project took place in February 2009.

The project is phased as follows:

• Phase 1: elaboration of base products for an efficient distribution of DTT or Mobile TV signals: May 2009,
• Phase 2: Implementation of first added-value features like security. Extension of some products to support other standards: November 2009,
• Phase 3: Addition of added-value feature to increase the range of business model supported by the Horizon products: May 2010.

Current Status

The project is now completed.

The project was officially started in February 2009, with a prior work already executed in May 2008.

Phase 1 was completed in March 2010.
Phase 2 was completed in November 2010.

Various products have been developed:

• Upgrade of HZ410, HZ420 Satellite-to-terrestrial transceivers,
• The AZ810 Stream Aggregator which aggregates 6 or more multiplexes on the same carrier,
• The HZ914 Multistream satellite receiver, able to demodulate and output up to 4 multiplexes simultaneously on its ASI outputs.

These products implement the following key features for the DTT market:

• Multistream technology to allow the efficient broadcast of multiple DTT, Mobile TV and other service (radio) multiplexes on the same carrier, and using one demodulator only for all services
• Implementation of a generic encryption layer that can be applied on all services seamlessly. This security solution, based on AES, also respects the signal integrity, allowing its use in SFN networks.

These products have been deployed in several primary distribution networks for Digital Terrestrial TV.