DVB-S2

Digital Video Broadcasting - Satellite version 2 (DVB-S2) is an improved version of the DVB-S standard for digital television distribution via satellite. DVB-S2 improves the transmission technique giving 30% greater efficiency than DVB-S and DVB-S2 is suited for an expanded range of applications.

DVB-S2 application areas

DVB-S2 is designed to be used for an expanded range of applications. The range of services include:

• Broadcast Services,
• Interactive Services,
  interactive services are designed to be used with a variety of return channels, such as a telephone line or a satellite channel;
• Digital TV contribution and Satellite News Gathering,
• Professional Applications,
  such as data content distribution.

Technical characteristics

In DVB-S2 a variable coding and modulation technique is introduced. This means that different levels of protection can be used for each service. For interoperability with DVB-S decoders, there are also backward compatible broadcast services possible.

DVB-S2 has four different modulation modes: QPSK and 8PSK for broadcasting and 16PSK and 32PSK for professional applications. The use of 8PSK instead of QPSK (=4PSK) gives an performance gain of 30%. In 8PSK there are 3 bits transmitted for each symbol as opposed to 2 bits for each symbol with QPSK.