Optimization of the Digital Terrestrial Television Transmission Mode of DVB-T2 in Colombia

In December 2011, Colombia updated its national Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) standard from DVB-T to DVB-T2, the second generation of the DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) project. DVB-T2 is the current state-of-the art DTT system in the world, and it brings very significant improvements in terms of capacity, robustness and flexibility compared with its predecessor. The case of Colombia is very special because it was the first country to deploy DVB-T2 with 6 MHz channelization and because the DVB-T2 networks were deployed from scratch without any constraint imposed by existing DVB-T infrastructure. This paper analyzes potential DVB-T2 transmission modes to optimize existing DTT network designs of Colombia, originally made for DVB-T, analyzing the trade-offs between capacity, coverage level and Single Frequency Network (SFN) size. Network planning results has been performed with a professional DTT network-planning tool based on the three first deployment phases of the DTT network of the public national TV broadcaster RTVC. Results obtained fully justify the decision of adopting DVB-T2. Compared with the initial DVB-T design, DVB-T2 can increase the national covered population up to 7.3% or offer 70.2% more of capacity transmission, or increase the SFN size up to 135% keeping the total power transmission and the geographic distribution of the transmitters