The final report of the DVB-H Validation Task Force is published this month by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) as TR 102 401 v1.1.1. This is a further endorsement of the important work done by thirty participants from twelve different companies during the last quarter of 2004. The document can be downloaded free of charge from the ETSI website: pda.etsi.org/pda/queryform.asp

The main objectives of the Task Force were to assess the Interoperability of early DVB-H implementations and to explore the technical performance of DVB-H. The laboratory tests included 25 pieces of equipment from 10 different manufacturers (including 8 DVB-H prototype receivers).

Network and receiver equipment interoperability were both explored, in all network configurations and all transmission modes, including the DVB-H 4K mode and the in-depth interleaver provided for 2K and 4K transmissions. The interoperability tests were very successful, confirming a common interpretation of the DVB-H standards portfolio. Interoperability tests revealed the different strategies that can be used to create a DVB-H service multiplex which were shown to provide a great deal of flexibility to trade-off power saving and service access time.

The interoperability tests also demonstrated full compliance and full interoperability between the modulators and receivers for all possible transmission modes offered by the extended DVB-T physical layer.

The most awaited study performed by the validation task force was the performance measurements. The vast number of possible combinations of Transmission and Services formats, highlighting the incredible flexibility provided by DVB-H, made exhaustive measurements impossible. But focusing on the most probable combinations, the DVB-H Validation Task Force obtained very impressive results in the laboratory tests (confirmed by the field trials), sometimes outperforming expectations.