This work presents eight demonstrators and one showcase developed within the 5G-Xcast project. They experimentally demonstrate and validate key technical enablers for the future of media delivery, associated with multicast and broadcast communication capabilities in 5 ^th Generation (5G). In 5G-Xcast, three existing testbeds: IRT in Munich (Germany), 5GIC in Surrey (U.K.), and TUAS in Turku (Finland), have been developed into 5G broadcast and multicast testing networks, which enables us to demonstrate our vision of a converged 5G infrastructure with fixed and mobile accesses and terrestrial broadcast, delivering immersive audio-visual media content. Built upon the improved testing networks, the demonstrators and showcase developed in 5G-Xcast show the impact of the technology developed in the project. Our demonstrations predominantly cover use cases belonging to two verticals: Media & Entertainment and Public Warning, which are future 5G scenarios relevant to multicast and broadcast delivery. In this paper, we present the development of these demonstrators, the showcase, and the testbeds. We also provide key findings from the experiments and demonstrations, which not only validate the technical solutions developed in the project, but also illustrate the potential technical impact of these solutions for broadcasters, content providers, operators, and other industries interested in the future immersive media delivery.

DVB-H is a new broadcasting standard, which offers reliable high data rate reception of IP packets for mobile handheld battery-powered devices. A link layer with multiprotocol encapsulation (MPE), including Reed-Solomon forward error correction (FEC) combined with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC), is defined in the standard to work on top of the DVB-T physical layer. For error correction in the receiver the DVB-H standard suggests to use erasure decoding based on the CRC information. Yet, the decoding method is not strictly determined in the standard. This paper investigates the performance of five different Reed-Solomon decoding schemes for the DVB-H link layer forward error correction called MPE-FEC. They differ on utilization strategy of existing erasure information. The performance of different decoding methods are evaluated analytically in an binary symmetric channel (BSC) and with simulations in the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and a mobile fading channel. For the simulations in the fading channel a packet channel model based on actual measurements is designed. It is shown that more sophisticated decoding methods than the one suggested in the standard are required for efficient retrieval of IP packets

In this paper the robustness of the physical layer signaling in the new DVB-T2 (second generation terrestrial digital video broadcasting) system is studied and compared to corresponding robustness of data path with help of computer simulations. The robustness is studied in both static and mobile transmission channels.

The European Commission requires all European Union (EU) Member States to use telecommunications networks to alert the population of an ongoing crisis or an upcoming threat by June 2022. Public Warning System in Long Term Evolution (LTE) and 5G System currently supports a text-based warning using Cell Broadcast technology. Cell Broadcast does not support multimedia warning message delivery. This paper analyses requirements that need to be fulfilled to support multimedia warning message delivery in the 5G System and describes trials of a broadcast multimedia public warning alert system. The trials demonstrate delivery of multimedia public warning messages using Evolved Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (eMBMS), dynamic spectrum management and bonded connections. By using eMBMS the public warning messages can be sent with additional robustness and in multicast mode, resulting also in less congestion to the network as the messages do not need to be sent separately to each user. Dynamic spectrum management system allows to dynamically obtain spectrum resources for the public warning system messages and the bonded connections improves the throughput and reliability of the delivery by combining the capacity of several different networks.

In response to the global megatrends of digitalization and transportation automation, Turku University of Applied Sciences has developed a test platform to advance autonomous maritime operations. This platform includes the unmanned surface vessel eM/S Salama and a remote operations center, both of which are detailed in this article. The article highlights the importance of collecting and annotating multi-modal sensor data from the vessel. These data are vital for developing deep learning algorithms that enhance situational awareness and guide autonomous navigation. By securing relevant data from maritime environments, we aim to enhance the autonomous features of unmanned surface vessels using deep learning techniques. The annotated sensor data will be made available for further research through open access. An image dataset, which includes synthetically generated weather conditions, is published alongside this article. While existing maritime datasets predominantly rely on RGB cameras, our work underscores the need for multi-modal data to advance autonomous capabilities in maritime applications.

This chapter studies the Licensed Shared Access (LSA) concept, which was initially developed to enable the use of the vacant spectrum resources in 2.3–2.4 GHz band for mobile broadband (MBB) through long-term static licenses. The LSA system was developed to guarantee LSA licensees a predictable quality of service (QoS) and exclusive access to shared spectrum resources. This chapter describes the development and architecture of LSA for 2.3–2.4 GHz band and compares the LSA briefly to the Spectrum Access System (SAS) concept developed in the USA. 5G and its new use cases require a more dynamic approach to access shared spectrum resources than the LSA system developed for 2.3–2.4 GHz band can provide. Thus, a concept called LSA evolution is currently under development. The novel concepts introduced in LSA evolution include spectrum sensing, short-term license periods, possibility to allocate spectrum locally, and support for co-primary sharing, which can guarantee the quality of service (QoS) from spectrum perspective. The chapter also describes a demonstration of LSA evolution system with spectrum user prioritization, which was created for Programme Making and Special Events (PMSE) use case.