Personal and mobile satellite DMB services in Korea

A new mobile multimedia broadcasting service using a geostationary satellite was launched on May 2005 in Korea. The Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (S-DMB) system provides high quality audio, video and data broadcasting services to handheld and mobile receivers. S-DMB is a personal digital media which can provide bidirectional and interactive services via the convergent platform of broadcasting and communication. At present, TU Media, the only S-DMB service provider in Korea, provides 15 TV channels, 19 audio channels, and 3 data channels. The number of subscribers is about 890,000 by Nov. 2006. Thousands of low power gap fillers (repeaters) have been installed in the shadowed or blocked reception areas in the metropolitan Seoul. This paper presents the system requirements, standards and specifications, architecture, and service status of S-DMB in Korea. Comparisons with other satellite broadcasting systems and the services are also presented. Link budget analysis on the direct path down-link (satellite to receivers) and relay path feeder link (gap fillers to receivers) are carried out in order to ensure the satisfactory QoS.