An adaptive coding and modulation based multicast scheme to reduce bandwidth consumption in the next generation satellite TV systems

In the recent past, satellite TV faces fierce market competitions with cable TV, IPTV, and the increasingly prevalent Internet TV. It can be anticipated that, in order to successfully survive in the next decade, satellite TV operators will deliver a larger number of TV channels with diverse programs in enhanced video formats, such as ultra-HD and 3D, to bring viewers much richer video and audio experience. Consequently, a lot more bandwidth will be needed in satellite TV broadcast networks, in particular in the satellite-ground links. In this paper, we firstly propose a conceptual transmission model which is promising for the next generation satellite TV systems. Then, we derive an adaptive coding and modulation (ACM) based TV channel multicast scheme to reduce frequency bandwidth resource consumption. We have carried out comprehensive simulation experiments to illustrate that the proposed ACM-based multicast scheme can effectively and efficiently reduce the Ka-band bandwidth consumption in spot-beams more than 2/3, with only slightly degrading the CBP up to 2%.