4 × 2 MIMO field test of advanced SFN using space-time coding for 8K transmission

Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) is aiming to broadcast ultra high definition television (UHDTV), such as 8K, terrestrially. To evaluate a next-generation terrestrial network, two experimental stations composed of an advanced single frequency network (SFN) using space-time coding technology were set up in the Hitoyoshi area of Kumamoto, Japan. The transmission capacity of each experimental station is a maximum of 91.8 Mbps when using dual-polarized multi-input multi-output (MIMO) and 4096QAM modulation. To evaluate an advanced SFN with a 4 × 2 MIMO system, we conducted experiments in a field test in the Hitoyoshi area to compare three SFN schemes: conventional SFN without coding, space-time coding (STC), and space-frequency coding (SFC). The results of the field tests show that the required received power of the STC-SFN and SFC-SFN are lower than those of the conventional SFN, and the amount of improvement averaged 2 dB. In this paper, we report on this field test.