Mobile TV with long time interleaving and fast zapping

The main challenge for provisioning of Mobile TV services is to overcome long burst errors as are often found in mobile reception conditions. Long time interleaving can be implemented by means of Application Layer FEC (AL-FEC) to increase the time diversity of the signal and thereby its robustness against burst errors. The main obstacle of long time interleaving for streaming services is the increase in service tune-in time, which significantly decreases the Quality of Experience (QoE) of end users. That is why today's Mobile TV systems are provisioned in a way to minimize the time interleaving length to provide an acceptable tune-in time, though the service robustness would significantly benefit from a longer interleaving length. This paper presents a new way of service provisioning that marries fast zapping and long time interleaving by combining Layer-Aware FEC and layered media codecs with unequal time interleaving and an appropriate transmission scheduling. The effect of the proposed scheme on the QoE as well as the service tune-in time is analyzed. Simulation results within a Gilbert-Elliot channel report the benefit of the proposed scheme, which for the first time enables broadcast services with fast tune-in and at the same time long time interleaving.