White Paper: Lightweight Protocol for Hardware-Efficient DVB Distribution in IP Networks

In this paper we present NetCeiver, a lightweight and energy-efficient IPTV architecture that is fully compatible to existing digital television broadcast systems. It allows an easy convergence of digital television and IPTV. During the transition, consumers can thus benefit from the advantages of both technologies. NetCeiver pursues an integrated approach that combines zero-configuration algorithms with hardware-software co-design to achieve a seamless convergence of DVB and IP television. Throughout this paper we use the term convergence to describe a way of delivering content independently of a specific transport medium. In traditional broadcast systems this would be called simulcast. IPTV allows convergent deliverance of television content over IP. NetCeiver is based on reconfigurable hardware. Thereby, it achieves a great flexibility with respect to upcoming standards such as DVB-IPTV. Moreover, NetCeiver is fully IPv6-compliant to ensure compatibility with future network requirements. In the following, we first briefly introduce some typical characteristics of traditional television broadcast systems. Based on our analysis we derive a novel architecture for transparently transporting broadcast TV services over IP.