Broadcasting Technologies Branch Overview Nov 2007

Technologies de radiodiffusion/
Broadcasting Technologies
CRC
Industrie Canada/Industry Canada
Communications
Research Centre
Canada
An Agency of
Industry Canada
Centre de recherches
sur les communications
Canada
Un organisme
d’Industrie Canada
Canada

CommunicationsResearchCentreCanada
COMMUNICATIONS RESEARCH CENTRE
MISSION
To be the primary technical centre of excellence in broadcasting
technologies in Canada in order to support the Department in its
mandate of managing the Spectrum on behalf of Canadians, and enable
broadcasters to provide improved and new services to Canadians by
transferring knowledge and technologies.
CRC is the only organization in Canada with a
R&D program and unique facilities dedicated to Broadcasting

Our Transmission Facilities
• DTV & DRB Transmission Test Beds
• Computer Simulations
• Test Van (10 Meter Mast)
• DTV Transmitters
•L-Band DRB Transmitter Ottawa
• L-Band DMB Transmitters Montréal
• Test Vans

Our Subjective
Assessment Facilities

• CRC-COVLAB:
Coverage prediction
and analysis
• CRC-SEAQ:
Evaluation of Audio
Quality
• CRC-TimeSync:
Audio Recording,
Display and
Synchronization
• CRC-FRC:
Frame Rate Converter
for film and video
Our Software
Clients: CBC, BBC, Broadcast
Australia, NTL (UK), Dolby,
DTS, Shure, Arbitron, Avnera,
NASA, Sirius Radio, U. of
New Mexico, CCETT, France
Telecom, Stocktronics, Philips,
Polish Television, Panasonic,
NTT, NEC, Matsushita, NHK,
Polanics, Samsung …

Our Partners in Canada
Mindready

Partners From Around the World

Some Collaborations
 MMB Demonstration in Montréal (CBC: Canada)
 DVB-H Windsor-Québec Corridor (Look-UBS: Canada)
 Software DAB Modulator (Mindready: Canada)
 DVB-H and Satellite Trial (Telesat: Canada)
 Virtual Navigation (University of Ottawa and NRC)
 Distributed video coding (Université Laval)
 Digital Broadcasting Techniques (CIRT: Mexico)
 Objective models of quality for HDTV (Intel: USA)
 Unlicenced Device Operation in TV band (IEEE 802.22: USA)
 3D Video (ETRI: Korea)
 Voice Application for DMB (ETRI: Korea )
 DTV Advanced-VSB (Samsung, MSTV, R&S)
 Loudness meter (CBC, NABA, WBU)
 Advanced Video Codecs (Telesat, WBU, ATSC)

Outreach Activities
• Contributions: CRTC ( IBOC),
Telecommunication Policy
Review Panel( SFN, DMB),
RABC, ITU-R, Video Quality
Expert Group (VQEG), CDTV,
DRRI, WorldDAB, ATSC, World
Broadcasting Union (WBU),
MPEG
• Publications: IEEE Transactions,
SPIE, JAES
• Conferences: WABE, CCBE,
NAB, IBC,AES, Picture Coding
Symposium, 3D TV,
BroadcastAsia…

Participation to Technical Conference
IBC 2006, Amsterdam CRC-COVLAB in LARCAN Booth at NAB ‘06
CIRT 2006, Mexico WABE 2006, Vancouver

Our Major Achievements
 Response to the CRTC Review on Broadcasting
 Contribution to the Standing Committee on Heritage
(Future of the CBC)
 Engineering studies for Industry Canada Spectrum
Engineering on the impact of new technologies such as
IBOC, DVB-H, MediaFlo on spectrum management
 Multiview video coding and 2-D to 3-D conversion for future 3-D
video systems.
 Novel wavelet based video compression and bio-inspired audio
coding algorithms.
 Contributions to WorldDMB related to audio codecs and voice
applications.
 Evaluation of Advanced-VSB and SFN for portable and mobile
Digital Television.
 Analysis of FM-IBOC laboratories and field tests results.
 Contributions to the new ITU-IPTV Focus Group.

More Achievements
 Demonstrations of our technologies at IBC in Amsterdam and
at NAB.
 Contributions to the Video Quality Experts Group (VQEG) for
Multimedia applications.
 Experimental Mobile Multimedia Broadcasting system under
evaluation in Montréal.
 Investigations on Digital Radio adaptive and directional antenna
performance.
 Standardization of our Audio Loudness meter by the ITU.
 Partnership with Larcan (Canada) on DTV coverage predictions.
 Continuous improvements to our software packages available for
licencing.
 Licence agreement with 3M Canada on Characters Reader
algorithm.
 Revenues and collaborations as achievement indicator

Evaluating our work
 Contribution to Spectrum Management
 Contribution to Regulations
 Contributions to Standards
 Support to government: SITT, CRTC, DND…
 Participation to national and international committees
 IP transfer
 Service Contracts
 Collaboration with industry, universities, international
organizations…
 Publications in magazines
 Conference publications
 Patents

• CRC’s Predict licenced to Northwood.
• Former CRC employee, Bernard Breton moved to Northwood
• Northwood sold to Marconi, U.K.
• Marconi sold to Ericson, Sweden
• Ericson’s wireless network planning sold to CTS Holding, Paris, France
• Launch of the new company: Mentum
• Bernard Breton is now COO and Head of Sales & Marketing
• 50-person R&D operation in Gatineau. Focus on Wi-Max
Long term impact of our work: An example

Trends
 Transition from analogue to all digital broadcasting
 All-digital technologies are re-defining broadcasting.
 The convergence between Telecommunications, Internet
and Broadcasting systems will accelerate.
 More advanced standards are in development.
 Broadcast spectrum to be used in a more efficient
manner, by sharing it with other licensed and unlicensed
systems and for the delivery of non-broadcast services
 Important regulatory changes will be necessary to
accommodate a more modern vision of the Canadian
communication infrastructure.
 Broadcasting will increase its role for public safety needs.

Technical Challenges
 Convergence of Computer, Broadcasting
and Telecommunication Networks.
 New applications for Broadcasting
Technologies
 Definition and Role of Broadcasters
 Fast evolution of technologies
 Changing Regulations
“Broadcasting is entering a new frontier. Structures and formulas
that worked in the past, and are the glue that holds much of the
systems in place, are being challenged by the brutal and unrelenting
force of technological change.”
The House of Commons’ Standing Committee on
Canadian Heritage

2007-2008 Plan
 Extension of Digital Radio Broadcasting (DRB) and Digital
Television (DTV) coverage
 Evaluate the potential of ATSC H/M, DMB, DVB-H, Digital
Radio Mondial (DRM),… to provide mobile and handheld
television services using the broadcasting infrastructure.
 Applications related to multimedia services for delivery by
broadcast as well as other systems such as Wi-Fi, WiMax
 Transfer broadcasting technologies for the development of
new products and services outside the Broadcasting
industry.
 Studies to determine how broadcasting and new
telecommunication systems can coexist in the same
frequency band

VPBT Future
 VPBT resources in 2008-09 ?
 Balance between internal and external resources
(45% of 06-07 VPBT O&M was external!)
 More collaborations: Internal and external
 Between groups within CRC and IC
 Universities
 Private sector
 Other departments
 VPBT in 2012
 Succession plan: New managers, new VP.
 Future R&D Topics

SFN infrastructure

FM-IBOC Tests at CRC
 IBOC transmitters moved to CRC
 Test methodology developed
 10 IBOC receivers acquired
 Test setup configured and refined
 Lab tests now in progress

Coverage Studies:CRC-COVLAB
Digital IBOC
Sideband
Analog FM
200 kHz
1st
upper
adjacent
analog
channel
1st
lower
adjacent
analog
channel
Detroit Analog FM Mono and Stereo & Digital IBOC
Considering 1st
Adjacent Analog FM Stations
Continue FM-IBOC interference studies
Develop of a module for AM-IBOC and DRM in CRC-COVLAB
Continue adaptation of CRC-COVLAB to CBC’s needs
DVB-H coverage
More consultation contracts
On-line CRC-COVLAB service
CRC-COV: $842k of IP revenues since 1994

Software DMB system

Audio Signal Processing
 State-of-the-art Perceptual Audio Codecs (MPEG-AAC) deliver
broadcast quality at a bit rate around 100 kbps per stereo pair
 Would like to reduce that rate to < 64 kbps with Novel Audio
Coding techniques
 RAAS developed a novel coding paradigm labeled as “Spike-
based Audio Coding”

Video Processing
 Simple and efficient 2D to 3D conversion
 Multiview 3D video representation and coding (Collaboration
with ETRI)
 Wavelet-based Image codec (CRC-CWT)
 Performance equals or exceeds that of JPEG-2000
 Wavelet-based video codec (CRC-WVC)
 Performance comparable to H.264
 Frame rate conversion (CRC-FRC)
 Multi-frame motion estimation
 Distributed Video Coding (Université Laval)

Quality Assessment
•Standards: Video Quality Expert Group-VQEG and ITU-R
•Bell ExpressVu, Videotron (Quality of HDTV service)
•NAVIRE (Virtual Navigation in Image-Based
Environment)
•Qualcom/MediaFlo (Mobile video quality)
•Telesat/WBU – Interoperability testing of MPEG2 Codecs
•VQEG Multimedia tests
•MPEG 2 vs H.264
Subjective assessment of picture quality in
support of in-house research, standards and
contracting-in

User
OAM
Interpreter
GPS
DAB
Control
System
Output
User
Input
Voice Browser
Voice Browser
Sync Manager
BWS Browser
Today’s weather.
Korea is expected to be mainly sunny.
And the wave of the sea is rippleless. If you
want more local information, please say your
city.
Seoul will be sunny.
The temperature will be from high 10 to low 3
degree. And the precipitation is 0%.
No accumulation is expected.
Multimodal Applications for Mobile Multimedia
Broadcasting (Collaboration with ETRI, Korea)

Conclusions
• Broadcasting continue to evolve and to play a major role.
• Radio and Television will be one part of an interactive
immersive multimedia experience.
• Contents will be available through various media and
displayed on a variety of devices.
• Ultimate goal is to get anything, anytime, anywhere…
• But each application will find its niche.
• CRC-Broadcasting is helping the department, the
Canadian industry and our international partners to move
toward an harmonious transition to a digital and converged
world.

Merci
Thank you
Expected Achievement

Internal Resources VPBT
$-
$500,000
$1,000,000
$1,500,000
$2,000,000
$2,500,000
$3,000,000
$3,500,000
$4,000,000
$4,500,000
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Année 2000-2001 2007-2008
Salaire
$-
$100,000
$200,000
$300,000
$400,000
$500,000
$600,000
$700,000
$800,000
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
G&S
SALARY Budget O&M Budget

Broadcasting Technologies Branch Overview Nov 2007

More Related Content

What's hot

Viewers also liked

Similar to Broadcasting Technologies Branch Overview Nov 2007

Broadcasting Technologies Branch Overview Nov 2007

Editor's Notes