Television services over an ip/mpls convergent satellite system

Satellite networks have been built by the DVB group dedicated to digital television service. However, in the service convergence trend, a future satellite network architecture has to be built in a less dedicated way to fit heterogeneous services. This article studies an example of a convergent television architecture in a unidirectional, geostationary, transparent satellite context. The goal here is to show the feasibility of a television service over a convergent satellite architecture. IP and MPLS are the convergent layers integrating the television service on the satellite access network. After describing the whole architecture, main technical problems are highlighted and discussed. Focus is made on DVB signaling migration, addressing and multiplexing issues, security, synchronization and scheduling strategies. Some simple quantitative and qualitative aspects are discussed for a possible migration.