DVB-S2X Specification Receives Approval from Steering Board

27 February, 2014

At the 76th meeting of the DVB Steering Board, new extensions to the DVB-S2 specification have been approved. The new enhanced specification, known as DVB-S2X, offers spectral efficiency gains for professional applications by up to 20 -30% and for some scenarios, gains of up to 50% can be achieved. In addition, new operational modes such as channel bonding increase flexibility. The specification will now be sent to ETSI for formal standardization and the DVB-S2X BlueBook will be published shortly.

The key impetus for the new DVB-S2X specification came from the providers of professional services and applications wishing to take advantage of technological advancements and the growing demand for their services. The timely approval of DVB-S2X means it can be implemented with HEVC, the latest video coding scheme. It is anticipated that the volume demand for chip sets and equipment will be driven by consumer internet services and broadcasts of UHDTV with HEVC coding via DTH satellites. DVB Members contributed to the work on the specification with more than 200 input documents.

DVB-S2X provides more choices for roll-off factors as well as additional modulation and Forward Error Correction (FEC) options that allow for the more efficient use of satellite transmission channels.

Other key improvements to DVB-S2 include: additional framing and scrambling options for very low Signal to Noise Ratio applications, which will enable satellite services for mobile (sea and air) and very small antennas; channel bonding of up to 3 channels will support higher aggregate data rates and allow for additional statistical multiplexing gain for services such as UHDTV; better resilience to co-channel interference for broadcasting; optional super-framing structure, opening the door to advanced interference mitigation techniques for interactive broadband services. The inclusion of DVB-GSE/GSE-Lite protocols could facilitate the migration to full IP services in the future – particularly suited for broadcast/broadband service convergence in the home network.

DVB-S2X Specification Receives Approval From Steering Board

"Throughout the technical activity, I was impressed to see European, US and Far East
companies, operating in different business environments such as broadcasting, VSAT or
DSNG playing together, as if in a symphonic orchestra, to design a state of the art common system," said Alberto Morello, Chair, TM-S2.

Peter Siebert, DVB‘s Executive Director added “We are delighted that the Steering Board has now approved the new DVB-S2X specification and I would like to congratulate all the Members that have actively contributed to bringing about this step forward in updating the excellent DVB-S2 standard. The satellite industry has been anxiously awaiting this standardization which will help it to improve profitability, interoperability and achieve further growth”.