Enhanced spatial multiplexing for rate-2 MIMO of DVB-NGH system

The demand for high bit-rate service transmission is increasing for digital terrestrial broadcasting just like other transmission technologies. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission is one of the most promising techniques to fulfill this demand for high transmission rates. This paper introduces enhanced spatial multiplexing (eSM) scheme adopted as technical baseline for the DVB next generation handheld (DVB-NGH) system. Most technical challenges for MIMO transmission in broadcasting comes from the rate-2 spatial multiplexing performance degradation in high correlation channel condition, which frequently happens in broadcasting owing to the line-of-sight (LOS) channel conditions. The proposed eSM exploits a pre-coding matrix optimized to overcome this condition. When combined with phase hopping to avoid specific harmful condition, eSM minimizes the performance loss under high correlation channels whilst keeping maximum multiplexing gain over rich scattering channels.