QoS-Oriented Solutions for Satellite Broadcasting Systems

In this paper, we analyze the capability of satellite broadcasting systems to offer different levels of quality of service (QoS). We focus on the European telecommunications standards institute satellite digital radio and digital video broadcasting satellite hand-held (DVB-SH) standards, which have recently been proposed for satellite broadcasting communications. We propose a strategy to provide different levels of QoS for the DVB-SH standard on the basis of an extension of the interleaving scheme, referred to as molded interleaver, which supports low latency service requirements for interactive services. An extensive analysis based on laboratory measurements shows the benefits of this solution. We also present a multilevel coding (MLC) scheme with multistage decoding designed for broadcasting communications as an alternative to the existing standards, where services with different levels of QoS are provided. We present a graphical method based on mutual information for the design and evaluation of MLC systems used for broadcasting communications. Extensive simulations for a typical satellite channel show the viability of the proposed MLC scheme. Finally, we introduce multidimensional constellations in the proposed MLC scheme in order to increase the number of different protection levels.