Flexible multiplex processing for low delay DVB-H systems

This contribution presents an enhanced multiplexing scheme for DVB-H to reduce the overall end-to-end delay. Besides the inherent end-to-end delay of traditional DVB-H networks the transport of streams with variable rate imposes additional overhead to the latency. This is caused by the fact that the Delta-T method of DVB-H cannot handle well variable rates with respect to latency. The scheme presented in this contribution reduces this overall end-to-end delay down to the factor of two while still keeping backward compatibility with the standard's specification. This frees handset manufacturers from the burden of providing special support at the receiver side to allow for decoding of the modified multiplex. An important advantage of the scheme proposed is the ability to trade off legacy compliance for improved end-to-end delay in a fine grained way. Thus, the network operator may choose an individual operating point for the DVB-H network.