A new DVB satellite standard has been published, ushering in a new era of satellite communications, enabling new services and higher transmission efficiency. Newtec will launch DVB-S2X products at NAB 2014 after having its own ‘S2 Extensions’ technology in the field for some time to already improve the existing DVB-S2 standard.

SINT-NIKLAAS, Belgium, 1 April 2014. Satellite communications specialist Newtec has begun real-world demonstrations and testing of the new DVB-S2X standard which was published at the end of February 2014 by the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project.

Open standards and interoperability have been instrumental to the continued success of the satellite industry. After many years of research and development, Newtec teamed up in February 2012 with other DVB-members to define a more efficient successor to DVB-S2. Today the extensions to the DVB-S2 standard are available and named “DVB-S2X”. Newtec products are software upgradeable to DVB-S2X and anticipated to ship as early as Q2 2014.

The new standard, which features technologies available and implemented on Newtec’s existing product range, brings multiple new capabilities on top of DVB-S2, including:

Lower Roll-Offs (RO) – reducing RO to 5%, 10% and 15% results in a direct gain of efficiency of up to 15% compared to DVB-S2.
Extension of the professional profile to very high carrier-to-noise ratios, resulting in transmission efficiency gains of up to 51% for links with a high link margin using MODCODS of up to 256APSK.
A new profile (VL-SNR, Very Low Signal Noise Ratio) for applications that require very low signal to noise ratios down to -10dB, used, for example, in Satcom On The Move (SOTM) and defense applications.
Increased Granularity in MODCOD choice – the number of MODCODs and frame size combinations has grown a lot compared to DVB-S2, bringing efficiency even closer to the theoretical Shannon limit for all transmissions of data and video.
Completely new MODCODs are introduced and optimized for use in linear and non-linear operation, whereas DVB-S2 was only optimized for saturated transponder operation.
A standard mechanism to bond carriers together, creating one big transmission pipe. For example, this technology will optimize the benefits of using video statistical multiplexing of up to 10 Ultra HD streams, resulting in 2-digit video compression gains.
“The new DVB-S2X standard is a key enabler for many new satellite services, including Direct-To-Home (DTH) Ultra HD 4K broadcasting,” said Steven Soenens, VP Product Management at Newtec. “Over the past weeks, we conducted real transmissions to a DTH terminal, demonstrating up to 20% throughput gain. We used a regular geostationary satellite transponder without changing its operational mode, power or bandwidth.”

Newtec will announce products with the new DVB-S2X standard on-board or as a software upgrade to existing products at NAB show, taking place from April 5 to April 10, 2014, in Las Vegas.

Serge Van Herck, CEO of Newtec, concluded: “Next to continuous innovation, we understand that open standards are fundamental to our satellite industry. That’s why we have been actively paving the way for the brand new DVB-S2X standard. Since DVB published DVB-S2 in 2005, the satellite industry has changed remarkably. Talk to us at NAB show and find out how the new standard combined with other Newtec innovations will improve your operations, what benefits you can expect and for which applications.”