Backward-compatible terrestrial digital multimedia broadcasting system for multichannel audio service

In this paper, a Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB) system for a multichannel audio service is proposed. The multichannel audio information on the T-DMB system proposed in this paper consists of a stereo audio signal coded by BSAC and additional multichannel side information coded by MPEG surround. These two types of information are conveyed through two elementary streams (ES), respectively. To control two elementary streams, two object descriptor (OD) streams are exploited, each of which transmits OD commands, including ObjectDescriptorUpdate and ES_DescriptorUpdate, related to a stereo audio signal and additional multichannel side information, respectively. With this method, the proposed system can convey multichannel side information while guaranteeing backward compatibility for the legacy T-DMB terminals, and moreover makes it possible to provide various advanced service scenarios with outstanding extensibility.