The concept of rrequency provision for nationwide digital terrestrial television networks

Abstract

30 years of experience of the state enterprise Ukrainian State Center of Radio Frequencies (UCRF) clearly showed how urgent the problem of providing frequencies for the evolution of Ukrainian television to the latest digital broadcasting standards is. The article presents the main conceptual principles of solving this issue, the stages and results of preparation for the adoption and further implementation of the digital broadcasting plan at the regional level, and also presents the practical results of frequency planning of nationwide digital television networks of Ukraine. The most important result of frequency planning is that in fact, in 2012, 100% of transmitters of 4 nationwide television networks were put into operation in Ukraine. Such a pace of implementation of television in the latest DVB-T2/MPEG-4 standard at that time was not observed in any other European country. The uniqueness of the situation was also that Ukraine actually rejected the entire historical stage of building television networks in the DVB-T/MPEG-2/4 standard, which the leading European countries went through and through which some of them are still modernizing their television networks to the DVB-T2/MPEG-4 standard. Based on the analysis of the planning results, a preliminary forecast was prepared for the formation of a new concept of frequency planning for the medium and long term with a preliminary analytical assessment of the theoretically possible number of nationwide digital television networks that Ukraine should focus on in the coming decades. As a result, in the future, the issue of frequency replanning and modernization of the television networks involved will be quite relevant, focusing on combining DVB-T2 transmitters with 2nd generation codecs in them.

Keywords: radio frequency spectrum, radio frequency band, television standards, digital terrestrial television broadcasting, frequency plan, digital television and radio broadcasting.