Exploiting digital terrestrial television for the support of tele- learning applications

This paper presents the potentialities of the new digital television in UHF (Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting– DVB-T) in supporting novel tele-learning applications, such as the “virtual classroom”, where the lecturer and the students are virtually present in the same classroom from their own premises. Based on the ATHENA FP6-507312 concept for the transition from analogue to digital terrestrial broadcasting (Digital Switchover – DSO), the paper describes a broadband access infrastructure and the realisation of a common IP backbone (present and available in the entire broadcasting area), that is capable to support such a tele-learning application for enabling lecturers and students to actively participate in it using real time interventions (video/audio).