Digital switchover in UHF: The ATHENA concept for broadband access

This paper presents a concept adopted by ATHENA IST-507312 project for the proper adoption of digital switchover (DSO) in UHF, towards establishing broadband access especially in rural and less favoured regions. Taking into account the local and networking capabilities of terrestrial digital video broadcasting standard (DVB-T), and by building on three pillars (a) the regenerative DVB-T concept, (b) the backhaul configurations and (c) the 'bit-rate allocation' aspect rather than the 'frequency allocation' one, it designs, implements and validates a broadband Fusion environment, which is capable of enabling access not only to digital TV bouquets, but also and most predominant to Information Society services, such as Internet, e-mail, multimedia on demand etc. within the same stream. Citizens access them via intermediate distribution nodes, namely cell main nodes (CMNs). Such a Fusion environment is commonly shared among broadcasters, telecom operators and active users/citizens, for open competition in technological and service level, in content creation and delivery level, in networking business/market field. Finally, the paper elaborates on the potentialities of the DSO in UHF to provide not only digital TV bouquets, but also a broadband access Fusion environment in regional level.