DVB-C2 completes Berlin field test

Glatz: DVB-C2 extends digital offering

Transmission tests on the second generation cable system DVB-C2 have been successfully completed by Kabel Deutschland in Berlin, just five months after its publication by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).

During the tests DVB-C2 modulated HDTV signals were transmitted on channel D562 alongside analogue and digital services on a fully loaded Berlin cable network.

Engineers pointed to the successful transmission of 1024-QAM and even 4096-QAM constellations, the most complex and spectrum efficient configurations of the new DVB-C2 cable standard, in a fully loaded 862 MHz cable network.

The DVB-C2 was developed by the DVB Project team as the next generation successor to original digital cable transmission standard. It follows similar work on satellite and terrestrial systems that created DVB-S2 and DVB-T2.

“The major advantage of DVB-C2 is the excellent spectrum efficiency and its flexibility and granularity of solutions for all kind of CATV networks“, said Lorenz Glatz, chief technology officer at Kabel Deutschland. “The key building blocks of DVB-C2 are the new modulation scheme (COFDM) and the powerful Forward Error Correction (FEC) system (LDPC). With DVB-C2 we will be able to significantly extend our digital offering, both for broadcasting and eventually for IP based services as well. In optimized networks DVB-C2 will allow to extend the theoretical maximum downstream capacity for 862MHz from 5 Gbps today to up to 8 Gbps”.

Christoph Schaaf, vice president new technologies and standards, Kabel Deutschland thanked DekTec, Sony and the Technische Universitaet Braunschweig, who have provided prototype DVB-C2 modulator and demodulator equipment for the tests. He said the first customer premises equipment (CPE) with combined DVB-C2/DVB-C tuners would be available by mid 2011.