Motivation

European countries are experiencing diverse success in Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) deployment depending on their history in broadcast, demographic and regulatory profile, and level of digital deployment of cable and satellite networks. Read More

Understanding the New “Eco”-system

Based on state-of-the-art human factor methodologies, INSTINCT will provide the user needs analysis that must be performed to facilitate the massive adoption of new ways of accessing content and services. Read More

Building and Validating an Open and Scalable Network Architecture

The inter-working points between the different domains and actors will also be identified with objective of defining inter-working units whenever required. System engineering rules will be articulated in order to cope with scalability issues. Read More

Content, Services and Applications

The business motivation in this area is to increase content/service creation productivity because of the increasingly diverse means of accessing services, in terms of networks and terminals. This productivity is enhanced only at the expense of making common as many steps as possible in the content/service creation process. Read More

Networks

Assuming that national regulations will evolve according to EC recommendations, the opportunity exists to deploy new networks specifically targeting broadcast-based mobile and indoor reception, with a better geographical granularity (i.e. smaller cells). INSTINCT will identify the provision to be made in the spectrum engineering rules that this requires. Read More

User Devices

The main user-device-related objective is to pave the way for commercial introduction of end-user devices able to provide intuitive access to mobile/portable broadcast and broadband services in collaborating networks. Read More

“Do and Make It Know”

The success of INSTINCT system concepts will be dependent on the way the consortium members will contribute to smoothing out the environmental landscape constituted by regulatory and standard bodies. Read More

 

 

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Motivation

European countries are experiencing diverse success in Digital Terrestrial TV (DTT) deployment depending on their history in broadcast, demographic and regulatory profile, and level of digital deployment of cable and satellite networks. It is not clear that DVB-based DTT will be a fast and significant European commercial success.
The commercial deployment and launch of 3rd Generation (3G) mobile technologies are likely to take more time than initially anticipated because of the high level of required capital expenditures and the uncertainties with respect to services that would massively attract users on these new networks. However, the EU commission identified that Digital TV (DTT in particular) and 3G must accelerate “the achievement of widespread access to new services and applications of the Information Society” .
It is therefore necessary that a European project of significant size identifies new opportunities around the DTT and cellular technologies, new applications, and helps the European-based industry to identify and investigate the technical and regulatory enablers for their commercialising.
In the new business and regulatory environment, the longer-term activities of various international workgroups such as DVB and 3GPP have slowed down as industry searches for a shorter term for return on investment. The INSTINCT project will bridge this recent trend with the latest technological developments, allowing DVB in particular to keep its worldwide domination as a broadcasting standard toolbox by supporting the design and testing of the DVB-H standard that is necessary because DVB-T is presently being challenged by ISDB-T in mobility and power consumption issues. INSTINCT will thus make a major contribution in helping Europe maintain its leadership in mobile and broadband communication technologies.

Understanding the New “Eco”-system

Based on state-of-the-art human factor methodologies, INSTINCT will provide the user needs analysis that must be performed to facilitate the massive adoption of new ways of accessing content and services. This has to do with how, what and when to make available content and services, in which conditions users want/need to access content, etc. As a corollary of this study, the actors deploying and running the overall systems will be addressed in order to make sure that the end-user needs are translated in the proper terms for them. This will take in particular the form of business analysis and modelling. The consequences of such analysis will be the identification of new possible alliances and roles economical actors and of new business methods.

Building and Validating an Open and Scalable Network Architecture

The inter-working points between the different domains and actors will also be identified with objective of defining inter-working units whenever required. System engineering rules will be articulated in order to cope with scalability issues. This requires in particular identifying the parameters that are key when scaling up the system. This is crucial to allow successful progressive introduction of open systems with distributed management functions.
Field trials that include testing of an open operational architecture composed of several broadcast cells will give final input on the viability of the overall system. The novelty will consist in having an open demonstrator that takes the complete/commercial like architecture. Roaming will be tested between different partners’ sites for instance. Feedback of a panel of users will determine whether the services have sufficiently “user-friendly interfaces” and will qualify the technical and commercial viability of the services.
Technology development in the project is articulated along three domains that intend to make particularly innovative contributions on: (1) content, services and applications, (2) user devices, and (3) networks. These contributions address both groups of actions of the eEurope action plan, which reinforce each other.

Content, Services and Applications

The business motivation in this area is to increase content/service creation productivity because of the increasingly diverse means of accessing services, in terms of networks and terminals. This productivity is enhanced only at the expense of making common as many steps as possible in the content/service creation process.
In content generation and production, the migration from the more or less autonomous production workflows of separate departments to workflows where content is created in a multitude of formats to be transmitted via a number of platforms and channels to different terminals will be planned. Content will be produced, generated and edited from a number of sources. A central server architecture connected to a Content Management System will be implemented allowing for quick, cost efficient and automated content editing. A mechanism will be established for ensuring that user’s privacy and security is kept in a common digital environment.
For applications in DVB, the preferred framework is MHP. Similarly, the personal mobile environment is very much driven by MIDP APIs. Hence, the inter-working of applications and services based on either MHP or MIDP will be explored by identifying the co-existence patterns. Because end-users may simultaneously interact with multiple devices based on different APIs, the over-the-air application provisioning and inter-working over heterogeneous application environments will be addressed. The outcome, constrained by realistic business cases, will be an application template generation tool that will assist the application designer in creating inter-working applications suited for distributed environments involving broadcast and cellular networks.
The overall content, services and applications framework will be validated through the implementation of reference scenarios in the area of e-entertainment and e-learning.

Networks

Assuming that national regulations will evolve according to EC recommendations, the opportunity exists to deploy new networks specifically targeting broadcast-based mobile and indoor reception, with a better geographical granularity (i.e. smaller cells). INSTINCT will identify the provision to be made in the spectrum engineering rules that this requires. This will lead to the definition and field validation of deployment rules for a cellularised DVB-T/H system. Because of the potential co-location of low power DVB-T/H transmitters with 2G/3G base stations, co-existence rules will be defined, depending on the identified interference scenarios.
Co-working of telecom networks and broadcast networks on the same site is a critical issue that will be addressed to cut down on roll out expenses of future services and networks, and to cope with environmental concerns. This subject will be studied from both theoretical and practical perspectives, to offer mathematical models as well as recommendations derived from field test observations. Such effort will contribute to provide “low cost access network equipment” and ensure “multi-service capability” of the sites resulting in a “reduction in capital and operational expenditure for installation and maintenance”.
At a logical level, while broadcast/cellular network integration has proven to be un-realistic regulatory- and business-wise, at least the inter-working mechanisms have to be identified. Based on past project experiences, enhancements will be elaborated in the area of Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning by facilitating the exchange of related information among the actors concerned in the value chain. This will come in support of the Service Level Agreement mechanisms that will bind the inter-domain QoS requirements.
The necessary QoS system components will be developed spanning from software modules implemented on the user devices that allow for sensible feedback via return channel for statistical purposes, to hardware components/ test probes which are geographically distributed over the co-operating networks to provide information on network parameters. Especially, this refers to new test probes for DVB-H signals, including physical layer measurements as well as modulation layer (I/Q) and protocol layer, signal generators for DVB-H signals and newly developed propagation profiles for channel simulators. The associated protocol analysis tools will target IP based services for such a system.
A rich-media encoding and streaming server will be developed. It will exhibit QoS awareness to dynamically adapt to network conditions by changing encoding/ streaming bit-rate and trans-coding the content format and resolution.

User Devices

The main user-device-related objective is to pave the way for commercial introduction of end-user devices able to provide intuitive access to mobile/portable broadcast and broadband services in collaborating networks. The eEurope 2005 action plan recognizes that the development of such terminals has a crucial for social inclusion.
User interaction means with the broadcast-capable device will be developed around a familiar device such as the mobile phone, where the broadcast receiver is not necessarily attached to the end-user interaction device (e.g. a BlueTooth capable mobile phone). The client-server application between both terminals will be defined having in mind that the broadcast terminal is likely to run MHP applications. With such an approach, a completely new, integrated (expensive) and possibly high-end device will not be required short-term, as long as the merging of broadcast/cellular features in a single device are not solved from a regulatory standpoint, and uniformly across Europe.
Today’s critical points in the feasibility of broadcast-capable devices compliant with a mobile usage reside in power consumption and miniaturization of the terminal front end. Current DVB-T designs are clearly not suited for handset integration, and only ways to improve this are either transmission layer level specification improvements or further optimisation of implementation of the current DVB-T standard in terminal front-ends. While the DVB Project is tackling the first option only with the creation of a DVB-H specification group, INSTINCT will explore both options, investigating further improvements of DVB-T implementation and validating DVB-H specifications suitability for handset integration.

“Do and Make It Know”

The success of INSTINCT system concepts will be dependent on the way the consortium members will contribute to smoothing out the environmental landscape constituted by regulatory and standard bodies. It will also depend on how well-known and easy to handle the various tools and specifications will be.
Within this domain, INSTINCT consortium members will contribute to the relevant international forums (DVB, ITU, 3GPP, etc), will build an open reference demonstrator, and will build and run the training courses that will help content creators, service providers, network operators, and application designers to acquire the necessary know-how for acting within the INSTINCT vision.