A power efficient framing structure for a next generation mobile broadcast system

Excellent power efficiency on the physical layer is one of the key requirements for mobile data transmission systems. Besides increasing the life time of the battery, this also minimizes the implementation costs. This paper describes a flexible framing structure, which allows for decoupling of the bandwidth of the transmitted OFDM signal and the bandwidth used by the receiver. Instead of decoding signals across the whole transmission channel, the proposed receiver utilizes only a narrow bandwidth segment with a fixed OFDM sub-carrier spacing. Hence, a low power receiver architecture with reduced complexity can be obtained. The described framing concept was originally proposed for the use in DVB's next generation handheld broadcasting standard DVB-NGH. However, this concept is not limited to broadcasting, but can be used in point to-point systems. This paper shows simulation results that prove the performance of the proposed solution in mobile channels and analyzes its power reduction capabilities.